I love the beginning of the semester - new professors, new classes, new assignments. However, often it does not take very long for the fresh excitement to fade and the stress to build. Do you feel the same way?
What can we do now to help protect ourselves from feeling bogged-down with all of our course work during the coming weeks?
Writing Intensive classes are designed so that assignments are divided into sections (in WI terms, they are scaffolded) and multiple drafts of a formal piece of work must be reviewed before the final version is graded. My advice is to review the syllabi for all of your classes and transfer "due dates" - both for informal and formal writing, drafts and final papers - to a single calendar that will be marked appropriately for all of your courses.
If you have some professors who don't scaffold assignments or who don't incorporate multiple drafts into the writing process, it's OK! I encourage you to take the learning tools that you have acquired from your WI classes and apply them to classes that aren't designated WI. If the due dates of final papers are provided for you, mark those on your calendar and then work backwards. Is there preliminary research you can do? If so, mark on your calendar when you want that to be done. When do you think you should have the first draft of a paper completed? Mark that too! And remember to also record your professors' office hours - and the office hours of your writing fellow - so that you make time to review your work with someone else.
With all of your due dates together on one calendar you will be better able to visualize the semester and plan for the assignments to come. It will allow you to see when deadlines overlap and think about how you can spread out preparatory work over weeks that appear less busy. This will help organize your time.
Just a word of caution - make sure that when you transfer the due dates from the syllabi to your calendar that you double-check to make sure you haven't made any errors!
