Education with Asperger's

Posted on April 14, 2018

Having Asperger’s is very challenging at times but one of the things I have struggled with the most throughout my education is organization. For most people organizing comes naturally, but not for me. I struggled even as far back as elementary school with organization. I would constantly loose handouts, homework and notes. When I would come home from school and it was time to do homework, it was a battle. I either didn’t know where the homework was, or I had left it in my locker or desk. Over the years I tried my best to keep everything together but nothing worked. Then one day I was on YouTube and I watched a video on Organizing a Binder with a woman who specialized in helping students with autism become well organized. Her system was very simple and something I had never heard of before but once I applied it changed my life.

Here is the system:
Different colored binders for each class
Color Code font to properly match the binder
Use 2 pocket dividers to place papers that aren’t hole punched or to store handouts and homework
Textbook covers match color chosen for class

As I applied this to my school life I found life became so much easier, I found myself not losing things or leaving things at school. One of the most important aspects of her system was to get binders that had a spot for a label on the spine, so that you could easily grab the items you needed based on a color.

Example:

Science blue binder, textbook cover blue, notebook blue
Math green binder, textbook cover green, notebook green
History orange binder, textbook cover orange, orange notebook

This helped me so much especially at the end of the day because I just had to remember I need all my blue items, orange items. I would just grab those colors that I needed and I would have everything I needed. I even applied this in high school and it helped me so much because I wasn’t leaving anything behind anymore. Now that I am in college I still apply this method and it works very well for me, especially taking multiple classes nothing gets let behind or forgotten.