Here it is: The Planner We Recommend for the 25-26 School Year

Dear Centered Students and Families:

First, now that we have made our final decision to close, I will come clean. I am heartbroken. I really thought we made a great product that had the potential to change student lives. I am incredibly HAPPY that your letters to me indicate that we did help so many of you for the five years we were able to produce The Centered Student planner and accessories!

More and more studies are questioning technology in education, so PLEASE feel free to ignore any digital device that isn't helping you - work to discern which of them are useful and which of them work against your brain by distracting you, speeding things up to the point of it being meaningless, or are making you feel bad about yourselves if it is social media. Ditch the platforms, make eye contact with others, start up a conversation, and LIVE.

If you are young, you cannot possibly know this right now but here's the plain old truth from a 59 year old lady who navigated a rocky road toward real self-esteem, achievement and happiness:

Nobody cares as much about what mistakes you make as you do. People think primarily of themselves, so ignore their opinions - especially if they are designed to hurt you.

TRUST YOUR GUT - if it feels wrong, walk away.

Be kind to everyone as a general rule and you will have few regrets.

If life feels hard at your age, it's because you are learning lifelong lessons. It's supposed to be hard.

Life will get easier if you stick to your values.

And yes, GASP, your parents might be right about a lot of things. Mine were and I'm still annoyed LOL.

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For your planner purposes, this is what we need:

1. To be able to see a week stretched out over two pages with vertical columns for each day from left to right. Preferably, each day will also have time blocks that you can adapt to create a visual representation of your schedule of regular events
2. To be able to fill in your other events, the ones that may change from week to week.
3. Weekends for college kids need to be on that spread and those sections can also be adapted to create a "to do" list so that in one glance you see all your classes, all your commitments and everything you have to do.
4. Then you look for OPEN SPACES and you choose which items from your overall "to do" list for the week could be penciled in and accomplished during those free blocks of time.

Look at the planner in an "out of the box" kind of way - are there notes pages where you can track your own grades, draw in your own class schedule? Make it what YOU need it to be! Can you find a good long narrow sticky note to serve as your to do list and move it from week to week? (I've provided links below to what I think will help you most).

DRUM ROLL PLEASE...

We recommend the Poprun Academic Planner for next year. MEDIUM SIZE or LARGE SIZE but NOT the pocket size because the week is not laid out well. Next year, order carefully and check out all the pictures and versions. You want the 6.5 x 8.5 with hourly time slots and multiple cover options.

And last but not least, be kind to yourself. If you miss a week, it's not "over," - just pick up where you left off. We are looking for PROGRESS, NOT PERFECTION.

Thank you for an amazing five years!