Using Evernote: As a Student

I don’t remember how I first found Evernote, but I do remember what I first used it for: notes for class. In fact, I think I may still have some high school notes somewhere in my Evernote account. While I use Evernote for so much more than school notes now, I still use it for school notes.

So, today, I’m going to break down how I sort out my school notes. Originally, I broke it down by class, and had it sorted by semester. So, each semester was it’s own stack (read this post for the Evernote lingo). The problem is, you can’t create a stack within a stack, which was what I really needed.
I had to figure out a new system.
Enter tags. I don’t use tags often in Evernote, but for school, I do. Now, I take notes like I normally would, but instead of having a notebook for each class, I have a tag. Each semester gets a notebook, and each class has a tag. Here’s my school stack:Some semesters only have one class, so I could probably rename them, like Summer 2015. Only taking one class this summer, but for the sake of continuity, I keep it by semester (and now I’m realizing that’s the only notebook with “classes” at the end. Guess I need to fix that).

Next to the date, in blue, that’s where you’ll see the tags. So, “practicum in publishing” was a class I took, and if you couldn’t tell, I did a project about The Scarlet Letter. I was able to use the Evernote Web Clipper to capture web pages that I wanted to use for my project, which is what most of the notes are in here.
This summer, I’m taking an online class, so I’m keeping notes in my Evernote account. I also forwarded the syllabus to my notebook for it, because Evernote supports PDFs.
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I haven’t used it for this, but with Work Chat, you could use it for school projects. Create a notebook for that project, invite people to it, and have conversations right in there (note to self, get everyone in classes on board for Evernote).
Another thing I use it for is a check list. One semester, I had a note that strictly had due dates for all my classes and when I finished an assignment, I checked it off. I need to do that again.
While taking notes is the obvious thing to use Evernote for as a student, there’s many other things you can use it for.
– Personal information. Now, I’m not talking social security personal info, but I do keep a list of my medicines in Evernote. This seems silly, but I’m on enough medicines that I don’t actually remember. Ever go to a doctor in your college town and realize your mom has been answering that question for your whole life?
You can also keep your grocery list in there, heck you could even share it with your roommates and keep track of who buys what. Anything you can apply to Evernote in life, you can adapt to fit your college life.
So, when you use Evernote as a college student, use it for everything.