We all know that one girl, she sits in class with her hyper organized planner and arsenal of highlighters.Her notes look like she has a template hidden somewhere. This girl isn't always a girl, but she usually is. Last year, I was this girl. Yes, I can already feel the groans and eye rolls, but last semester was one of my best, most organized and busiest semesters. My homework for the year was planned out by the day, my planner was broken up into color-coded categories, and I was almost always on time.

For one reason or another, you can call it a social experiment or general lack of motivation, I gave up my color-coded mess for just a general mess. While it certainly wasn't the best idea, it did teach me a lot about giving a method to the madness. Here's what I didn't realize at the beginning of the semester: just because I'm not writing it down and assigning it a color doesn't mean y life isn't just as hectic, and possibly even more so considering that's just how the second semester is. So maybe now I'm having to play catch up and re-learn my organizational system, but is was all worth it in the end, right?

There is a silver lining to everything of course, and I can't say I didn't walk away with a lot of lessons learned. At the very least, I won't "experiment" like this again and through my fumbles hopefully others can avoid making the same mistake. I know that, while this system works great for me, it's not for everyone. But really, what are you losing by trying it out for a semester or two? Or if we're being honest with ourselves, maybe just the first couple months of the semester.

I'll be the first to admit, not everything needs a color. Honestly, I'm not sure they make enough colors for all my different activities to get one. Instead, I break things up into about five categories. Why five you may ask? Because that's how many different colors of highlighters I actually like. When I looked at my color-coded planner it could feel overwhelming at times and I thought that the system took too long at times.

Without the colors, though, my planner is at best dreary and at worst almost incomprehensible. It may take time to shuffle through my bag for the right highlighter, but it takes much longer to read through the long list of activities when I only have time for a quick glance. Also, by coding for the type of activity each responsibility was I could quickly see when academics, work, or social events were taking over my life.

I've always looked forward to the start of a new school year when I can get a new planner and start filling out all the days. That may sound really nerdy, but I'm okay with that. I'm looking forward to next year with particular enthusiasm because now I know what I'm missing out on. I may have been a color-coded mess last year, but I'll take that over a plain old mess any day.