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School on its own is already stressful enough. Especially if you're balancing studies and a job, it can feel like there's no time to prioritize applying for summer internships or co-ops. I am by no means an expert, but it took almost four years to gather a few tricks and tips to stay on track with my studies and career development. Hopefully, these insights can help you too.
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Spend a day at the beginning of the semester to review your syllabus schedules and write out your assignments, presentation, quiz, and exam deadlines. Your first week of classes will most likely include syllabus reviews, making it the perfect time to input all your tasks and deadlines in your calendar and a productivity platform.
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I like to use Notion to keep track of my upcoming deadlines in a database where I can use metadata to categorize them, check-mark them when finished, and take class notes, all in one space! So, check out and duplicate my School Workspace Notion Template.
What's great about Notion is that merges planning with documentation and collaboration. You can share particular pages with other members and collaborate on a brainstorming doc or draft for a specific deliverable before creating your final doc in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
For all iOS users, you can even turn one of your Notion pages into a home screen widget to easily access your upcoming deadlines on your iPhone!
So you have your deadlines listed but when it comes down to tackling them, the workload can feel overwhelming. How can we relieve some of that stress?
Keep small to-do lists for tasks you must do in one sitting or during that study session. Ideally, write out at most five mini-tasks. Nothing is more gratifying than checking off a to-do, so allow yourself to have smaller wins. The key is to keep the to-do's short, concise, and specific, making sure you're not thinking too much ahead and only at the task at hand.
I like to set up small to-do list cards on my desk. However, if I were at a coffee shop, I would bring my iPad and use the GoodNotes To-do List template. Another option, for your at-home office, is to use a website like Lifeat.io. It allows you to set up an aesthetic virtual workspace (ex: travel to the Hogwarts library) which is great for working with a monitor and create a mini to-do list widget on top of the beautiful view.
Take some time early in the process to find out when companies open their applications to students. Of course, every company is different, but based on my experience, large companies post business intern positions about a year before the internship. On the other hand, UX design intern positions are posted about nine months before the internship period.
And so, I like to keep a page in my Notion space of company-specific and agency-specific job pages as well as industry-specific job boards.
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Once you're ready to start applying to companies and agencies, keep track of all the positions you applied for in a spreadsheet or Notion board. You can update the status of the application and include a link to the posting. If you create a Notion board, you can copy-paste the job posting into the individual Notion pages within the database. Then you can refer to the job posting to identify repetitive keywords and use them to tailor your resume.
Check out and duplicate my Job Prep Notion Template, which contains a section to draft your application documents, job boards for internships and UX design positions, as well as databases to track your application and cold messaging leads!
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Feel free to reach out using my contact form!