DropBox

Sign up at Dropbox.com to get 2 GB free of storage. I wish that this had been around while I was in college because I would have used it - majorly. Instead of keeping your files separate on your computer/laptop and your profile on the school server (in which you probably have to use a VPN in order to access it), store ALL your files on DROPBOX.

Just to let you know, by clicking that link you will add 250 MB to my 2 GB base. I'm not saying you have to do it, but I would appreciate. If you share with multiple people, you will be eligible for gains as well.

I've also shared my collection of recipes with multiple people and used this website to back up important files that I don't want to lose (like I lost all my pictures from Singapore...).

I think that this will save you a lot of stress and be a great tool for sharing resources among classmates/teams/friends.

Good luck!

Saving Documents on the Computer

It's Finals Week at Indiana University right now, and sometimes professors are awesome (and yet, horrible) and tell you to write a long paper (or two) instead of putting you through a grueling test (that in the past, most people have failed).  It's good.

However, [as I have mentioned before, procrastinate WISELY] there are hard lessons to learn.

This may be common sense, but it is very important that you:

Save all your documents to a real folder.

If you don't know, most University computers' memories are wiped out every night. Sometimes you will find a file belonging to someone who has used the computer before you on the desktop. In my experience, you will have your personal storage space within the University's computer system (something like an H: drive), but if you save to the physical computer's harddrive, you can kiss that paper that you've been working on for thirty hours GOOD BYE. If you just save without making sure that you are saving it to the appropriate drive, you will be filled with frustration, searching-frantically-mania, sadness, anger, and frustration again (in this order) [ending in either a FAIL from a class, or a CHANCE AT A SECOND LIFE if your professor is kind and generous (this is rare, unless you are a small Asian girl)].

And if you want to be really smart, keep a soft copy of all your documents in your e-mail (in Gmail, you don't have to send it; you can just attach it to a draft which you delete later after all is done with that particular draft).

Keep a "soft copy" of all documents in your e-mail

Purdue's webmail is less than desirable (so, apparently, is IU's), so I set up for an automatic forwarding to my G-mail account (which is more aesthetically pleasing, allows me to send from my Purdue e-mail address, and has 2 GB of storage).

You may type up a paper and print it out in your room, but I was always frugal about this and printed things out from the computer lab before going to class to turn it in.  At Purdue there are print quotas anyways.

But sometimes the printer broke down, and I didn't have time to go anywhere else, so I just e-mailed my professor the paper instead. 

I used to just upload the papers into My Drafts and delete them once the paper was turned in, but I found that it was better just to send them to myself (the subject being the class and title of the paper) so that revisions later would be easily accessible, and I didn't have to go home to retrieve the file.

Microsoft Skyline also offers 25 GB online storage space, so you can use this if you want to upload files.

Each course had its own file in my computer, and at the end of the semester, I would zip each one up and throw it into my external hard drive.  Then every year, I would have a fresh palette to begin organizing my files again. 

I also organized things by date. Yes, I know that Windows allows you to do this wich a click of a button, but I didn't like the way it looked. I named all my documents according to the year, month, then day:

2009.02.11 College 101

You don't have the follow my system exactly, but I just want to tell you what worked for me. Organization is Key.