How to use Notion as a student
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- WHAT IS NOTION
WHY STUDENTS SHOULD USE NOTION
HOW TO GET STARTED
PAGES IN NOTION
USEFUL FEATURES IN NOTION
FINAL THOUGHTS
WHAT IS NOTION
Notion is an all-in-one productivity platform. It is a great productivity and organization tool. Because of its flexibility and an array of useful features, it has gained massive popularity in recent times. Read below to see why Notion is so popular and how to use Notion as a student.
Notion is an all-in-one workspace where you can share information, add tasks, manage projects and more.
It is a popular tool among students. If you are tired of using different productivity or organizational app for a different purposes then Notion is the perfect fit for you. Using Notion as a student can save you lots of time and energy.
But based on personal experience, it can be intimidating to start using Notion. But believe me, once you get used to it, you won’t go back to any other app. It’s that good!
WHY STUDENTS SHOULD USE NOTION
- It is free – the most important point, isn’t it?
- You can use one tool for many things
- You can take class notes
- There are plenty of ready-made templates to adapt to your needs
- You can create to-do lists
- You can manage daily tasks
- It can be used to create a resume
- You can easily embed different things like lists, data tables, images,and even other pages.
- It’s super useful for collaborative work. You can view the page history and use @ to reference teammates
HOW TO GET STARTED
Notion is free for personal use. Go to this site: https://www.notion.so/product/notion-for-education and create a new account by selecting “Try Notion free”.
You’ll be asked, “How are you planning to use Notion?” Select “For Myself” to get a free account. You can also log in with your student email address to upgrade to a free Pro account. (Being a student does come with its advantages ;))
Once you’re signed up, you can either use Notion in your web browser or download it as an app for desktop or mobile devices.
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PAGES IN NOTION
Your Notion workspace will start with a page. You can add different pages for different uses. And instead of folders, there are subpages in Notion. You can create multiple pages within a single page in Notion.
In this section, I’ll show you a few important pages you can add to your Notion. You can use these as guidelines to create other pages based on your needs. Plenty of ready-made templates are also available which makes organizing everything much easier. I’ll talk about that in the next section.
Of course, there’s no right and wrong way to use Notion so use whichever pages feel right for you. If you’re someone who gets overwhelmed easily, I’d recommend that you start with a few essential pages and then add more as needed.
subpages in notion
Instead of folders, there are subpages in Notion. You can create multiple pages within a single page in Notion.
Just click on a new page or use the shortcut “/page” to create a new page.
Home page in notion
This page will serve as your main page in Notion. Just like a homepage on a computer or anywhere else, it is the place where you can store all the important things. Or alternatively, you can also customize it to act as an index to other important pages such as your planning list, to-do lists, etc. For that, you need to create the different pages individually and simply add them to the Homepage. You can then organize it however you wish to and also use images and custom colors and fonts to make it productive cough pretty
IMPORTANT FEATURES IN NOTION
Ready-made templates
This is one of the very useful features in Notion, especially for students. Using ready-made templates allows you to save a lot of time. It also makes it so much easier to manage your academic as well as personal life. As a student, there’s so much happening around you – you want to enjoy college life, hang out with friends, take part in different extracurriculars, all the while managing your grades.
Here are some amazing Notion templates for students that will make your student life much easier.
Customizable classes planner
The customizable degree planner that tracks all your requirements. It has a semester view as well as a table view. In the semester view, you can write down the courses for each semester and write down the important exams and assignment names below it. The table view allows you to record important things like grades, prerequisites and names of course instructors.
With this template, you can make sure that you reach your required credits and grades. You can also customize the template to add other important things to it like the estimated time you need to study or a link to reference material or course descriptions.
Here’s the template: https://www.notion.so/7fe7bb6c7d6f4863b700c068f84c6b98?v=c32cf4f890df415fb4aa6c898e83c323.
You can duplicate it and customize it to plan your classes. So cool, isn’t it?
An easy way to manage online classes
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we learn. Online meetings have replaced traditional classrooms. And while this means you just need to log in instead of moving through the campus, searching for the right classroom, it also means that you’re likely to arrive late to a zoom meeting.
This template is very useful for students because it will make the links to your online classes very easy to access. It has a weekly course schedule, and all you need to do is add your links to the relevant places and you’re good to go! No more frantically searching for links 5 minutes before (or after) the class begins XD
It also has other useful sections. I love the assignment and exam schedule because it helps you to organize all the dates properly.
You can access the template here: https://www.notion.so/School-bb6318daefbe486d96288c7f2c301d83
google drive integration
Nowadays, everyone uses Google’s productivity suite in some form or other. It is especially popular among students. That’s why it’s great that Google apps work perfectly fine with Notion. You can seamlessly integrate Google docs, sheets and other apps with Notion.
embeds
This is a great feature in Notion. You can embed so many different things in Notion. This includes normal things like lists, data tables, images, and other pages. And then it also includes cool things like YouTube videos, web pages, playlists, etc. That’s right, you can embed songs from Spotify too (but you can only play them for 30 secs!). This helps show everything on one page.
shortcuts
The slash (“/“) is a popular shortcut in Notion. It allows you to quickly create new content on your page. You can perform different actions like adding images, links, creating pages, etc. You can also perform different actions by adding a keyword after the slash. You can also add bullets, to-do lists, etc. using it.
weekly agenda
Notion has a built-in weekly agenda template. How cool is that?! Students can use it to set deadlines for exams and assignments. This is what the weekly agenda template in Notion looks like.
You can also prioritize the tasks by assigning them different colors.
fonts
Okay, Notion has a limited number of fonts. But hey, that just means you have lesser choices and you’ll spend less time in decision making, thus you’ll be more productive. This also gives Notion a clean and simplistic look – perfect to boost your productivity.
different headers
This is also more than just an aesthetic thing. Different headers break your text and make it more readable. When you use headers, instead of looking at a block of continuous text, you can get an idea of the entire content just by reading the headers.
colored backgrounds
Coming to the aesthetic part of Notion – you can use colored backgrounds to make your content pretty. But like most of its features, it also serves a functional purpose: it can be used to make important content pop out. You can also highlight the content with different colors based on priority. This helps keep your content more organized. You can add a colored background by changing the color of the blocks in Notion.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Notion is truly one of the best productivity apps out there. It has some very useful features to organize your life and to help you be more productive. This all-in-one productivity app has helped me a lot. I feel that the best thing about using Notion as a student is the variety of templates that are available.
It might seem complicated at first, but once you start using it, you’ll quickly get used to it. And trust me, it’ll save you so much time and energy afterwards!
If you haven’t already, you should definitely consider using Notion! Have you ever used Notion before?
Let me know your experience in the comments below!
