Written by Alex Fisher

Thumbnail & Banner Photo by Fabian Albert on Unsplash

University can be a stressful time for many students. Trying to balance school with work and a social life leaves many feeling a bit scattered at times, making it easy to misplace your notes or forget the little things like plugging in your phone before bed. That’s not to mention being so constantly on the move between classes and labs, where you can easily lose track of which room you’re headed to next, or to get winded from a heavy backpack. Fortunately, there are a number of small gadgets and devices which can be used to help make the day-to-day experience of earning your degree that much easier.

While there is a large variety of such gadgets, it can be hard to sort through all of them to find the ones which are actually worthwhile. Avoiding scams and crappy hardware while trying to improve your life and still staying on top of assignments and work and socializing can be an exhausting endeavour. This is why I have gone through to search and present to you, from one student to another, a handful of the most useful pieces of tech to help elevate your daily life in university.

If you’re like me, you’ll often find yourself up late in the night, working on assignments until your eyelids are so heavy you could just about fall asleep on your desk. It’s easy to forget the little things in such a state, like plugging in your phone before you lie down in bed. Then you might spend the next day anxious about your phone dying, struggling to charge it between classes.

This is where power banks come in. These devices are essentially just really big batteries which you can use to charge your phone, earbuds, tablet, smartwatch, or just about anything else. Some can even be used to charge your laptop, though these need to have a higher power output and so tend to cost much more. The standard size power banks can cost anywhere between $20 and $50, depending on their brand and capacity, and are compatible with most devices due to using USB ports. Some can even have extra features like built-in flashlights or solar panels to help them stay charged.

Overall, power banks are a useful tool for anyone constantly on the go, or who might sometimes forget to charge their devices.

Some students prefer the experience of writing notes by hand. In fact, research shows that physically writing things out can even improve your memory. However, there are definite benefits to digital note-taking: improved accessibility, less waste, being able to back up your files to a cloud service, and more. While we did publish an article last month about using tablets or two-in-one laptops to help with writing out your digital notes, both of these options can be somewhat expensive.

An alternative solution which still allows you to physically write out your notes whilst also reaping the benefits of having digital notes is a smart notebook. Typically costing between $20 and $40, these are rather simple gadgets. They can contain upwards of forty pages and use special pens and paper which can easily be cleaned off, meaning that once you fill a page you can use a simple microfibre cloth and wipe your notes away. While this may not sound ideal at first, also consider their other appeal: such notebooks often come with apps which will use your camera to take a picture of your notes and then upload them straight to your preferred cloud service.

Smart notebooks allow you to save on money, paper waste, and storage space by acting as one reusable notebook for all of your classes. They may, however, cost you a bit of time: they will not be as efficient as tablets or two-in-one laptops are for the same thing, with the extra steps involved in taking pictures of and uploading your notes. The extra time spent should be minimal, however, and the money saved on a more expensive device or constantly buying new notebooks should serve to make that little extra time spent worthwhile.

We’ve all been there: it’s the first week of the semester, you haven’t memorized where your classes are yet, and you’re scrambling through the halls while trying to pull up your class schedule on your phone so you’re not late to your next lecture. If only you had a more convenient way of pulling up your schedule, or even of getting direct reminders, that you could freely glance at and not worry about dropping.

The perfect solution to this problem: smartwatches. While the more recognizable brands can easily cost hundreds of dollars, going for a bargain smartwatch might only cost you as little as $30 or $40. A rather reasonable price to pay for never again having to worry about where your next class is, when your next assignment is due, or needing to know the time. Many of these devices are even able to connect to your smartphone via an app, pairing them together seamlessly so that you can see any texts, calls, or emails you might get as well.

If you’re the sort of person who benefits from reminders for your classes or assignments, who wants to be able to check your notifications without taking your phone out of your bag or pocket, or maybe you just like to wear something on your wrist, a smartwatch might be right for you.

This is barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to handy little gadgets which might make your day-to-day university experience easier. For every minor problem or annoyance you might have, there is almost guaranteed to be something which fills that niche–the problem is sorting through everything that isn’t what you need in order to find what’s actually useful. While I’ve only assembled three budget-friendly items here, they are ones that you might find to be the most generally useful for each day you spend earning your degree; the ones that can help you be the most productive or reduce your daily stress.

Useful Gadgets That Can Improve Your University Experience

FOLLOW US