Back to school: what you really need.

image taken from wix.com

The moment August hits students rush to buy stationary, often overdoing it. As a student myself I am also guilty of having done this. I know how exciting it can be to enter a bookstore and see the abundance of school supplies: cute pencils, diamond covered pens, colourful notebooks, pastel highlighters and more. Usually what happens is you buy the whole bookstore but at the end of the year you realize you have used almost none of supplies you bought, spending too much money in the process

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Here is my personal guide on how to avoid this:

1)  Pens : buy 2 black pens, 2 blue, a green pen and a red pen. It is even better to buy simple ball-point pens since they are cheaper. However, I always prefer the gel pens. Those decorated pens are usually useless since they are too heavy and uncomfortable. Please don’t buy diamond encrusted pens, you won’t use them.

2)  Notebooks: this depends on what school you go to. If you go to school that mostly uses laptops you really don’t need that many notebooks. 3 notebooks maximum works for me. I would really recommend using an ipad for school since you can write on  it and type so really you don’t even need notebooks.

3)  Highlighters: please don’t buy that pack of 20 pastel highlighters- you don’t really need more than 4! And again if you use an ipad or laptop you can easily highlight whatever you want!

4)  The essentials: obviously get a pencilcase and fill it with only what you need: a black pen, a blue pen, a red pen, a green pen a gluestick, scizzors, a small ruler, an eraser and a scientific calculator. You can also throw in some coloureful pens or highlighters or even white-out if you want your notes to be aesthetic.

5)  Folders and binders: since I am a really organised person I like to have binders and/or folders for every class. I would say that most of my money went into buying folders and binders, I know many people just throw their worksheets into their bags and don’t need folders. Personally I don’t recommend this. Last year I had different folders for each unit in biology, chemistry and physics. For English, History and Greek I had binders and for maths I had one folder for the whole year. You can also have a day binder in which you fill it with what you need for the lessons you have that day. Each school works differently so I would say its up to you to work out how to organise your work for each subject.

6)  A schoolbag: this also depends on where you go to school. this year I will be bringing a shoulder bag/tote bag to school instead of a backpack since I will be studying 3 subjects only and I can also store whatever I don’t need in my locker. So it really depends on how many notebooks and supplies you need to be bringing to school everyday and if you have a locker or not.

7)  A necessity bag: I have always found this to be very useful. It’s a good idea to have a small pouch/bag in your schoolbag for emergencies. You can put whatever you think you might need during the school day -painkillers, hand sanitizer, wet-wipes, makeup, perfume, deodorant and anything else you need.

I hope I have clearly outlined what you really need for back to school. I know back to school shopping can be really exciting but please don’t over do it . Just get what you need and if you’re missing anything you can get it during the year.