Second Semester Notion
With my first week of second semester dow, I revised my Notion setup. I know previously I had a different set up for my first semester so I wanted to walk you through the new layout.
Again for privacy the layout will be structured toward a student who is going to school at UC Davis. Just for my purpose of privacy.
Quick info before I jump in. Here are some basics to know.
Basics
Notion is based on blocks. A block can be a paragraph of text or an image. It can also be a calendar or Kanban chart. There are more than 50 types of blocks available in Notion and more are constantly being added.
Here are some blocks you can use:
Images : Add images to add more detail to your pages. You can upload any link or file on your PC.
Audio : Embed Spotify and SoundCloud files to stream your music via Notion.
Code : Add code snippets to any page and save them as you go, in all major languages.
Web Bookmark : Upload articles, links and videos as a web bookmark for later.
Video : Embed YouTube and other video services and watch all within Notion.
Files: Save PDFs, Doc.x and more. Even import them into your Notion too.
Pages: In Notion, pages are like new documents, except that they can be an instance of anything you like.
Databases: Notion database is like a hybrid spreadsheet/database application.Essentially a Notion database is a spreadsheet-like table that can be queried and displayed in different ways. For example, you could create a database that contains information of all your courses and display it in various views: /Table view /Board view /Gallery view /List view /Calendar view /Timeline view
Mentions/reminders : Just like most competing software, you can @mention a team member to grab their attention to a particular block. And you can add reminders so that you don’t forget about something you need to do in the future.
Now lets begin…
Callout box
First we have a box on the left at the top that has the general info. This is where you can keep your name, advisor name, degree and school. institution email. The box on the right I have for my mailbox info. So for me my mailbox number and combo go there.
Greeting Date and Time Widget
Next, after the first two boxes above, we have a large area with a sidebar. In the larger area there is a widget that has a greeting, date and time. You can get the link to it here. After that just paste it into your Notion.
Calendar Widget
Next to it is the small sidebar sized calendar widget. You can use this site to make the calendar widget.
Link Page
After that there is a links page with a link icon. Inside the page are all the links. You can categorize them. Also the checkbox column is called quick links and if you click the checkbox then it will show up in the main page area.
Then after the student links section there is a dividing line below it is the two colors of the school.
I used ColorHEX which shows you a photo of a color based on its HEX code. There you can right click and download the color as an image.
Under my first color which is gold I have the following pages: To do Near/on Campus, UC Davis Campus Calendar, Campus Map. Each page title will be a bolded heading in this post, explaining more what it contains.
To do near/on campus
This page contains a link to UCD location guide.
UC Davis Campus Calendar
This page includes the list of campus events I inserted via web link. But it also has web links to the UCD calendar.
Campus Map
Inside is a link to the pdf campus map and I also embedded the pdf directly into the page so you can view it right there.
Next to the gold color I have another dark blue color again made with ColorHEX which shows you a photo of a color based on its HEX code. There you can right click and download the color as an image.
Under the blue color I have three pages called directory/contacts, Courses-all year & schedule.
Directory/Contacts
The Directory/Contacts houses a database for all the university contacts. You can enter the email, number to text them, their title and if they teach any courses. The courses column will link to your course database so if you are adding courses to a professor, for example, Jonni Johnson, M.A., you can select the course from the database called: Courses-all year. So you can see what courses each professor takes in the directory/contacts but it will also show up in the database
Courses-All Year
This database is set up for a 4 year degree. Each table entry is a spot for a course. It has additional data info for each course such as name, credit amount, instructor, year, planned semester,meeting days , meeting times, location, link for the syllabus dates, CRN number.
The planned semester section is included so when you go back to the main page (college 2.0) then all the courses labeled year 1 for fall and spring semester will show up.
Schedule
The schedule page just has helpful links to making your college schedule.
Below those sections there is a dividing line.
Notes/Files Hub
Under that is the notes and file hub. This is where all the links to everything you have for classes go. You can sort them by tags which you can edit to have each class a tag. Then all the economics tagged links will show up under the class. You can see that in the video below.
Lastly, like before, I said this is the linked database for the courses
To create a linked database type /create and you’ll see the first option to Create linked database. Then type the name of the database you want to link to. It just only shows the courses that are year 1 for fall and spring semester.
I hope you find this helpful. I know many people have been asking how to use notion and maybe you can use this template to get to know how Notion.so works.
Download College 2.0
