The Websites Every College Student Needs to Amp Productivity, Part 2

Maintaining a positive attitude as the fall semester drags on can be tough. You may go into the new school year with a fresh outlook on how to make this your best semester yet, but when assignments start to pile up and finding time for a social life gets harder and harder, it can be tough to keep your spirits up.

In this second installment of our series, we look at websites that can be perfect study aids for when a science project seems hopeless, sites that can help you with time management and even social media tools that your professors will agree will help you in the long run.

Wolfram Alpha

Even if you’re a liberal arts major, there are still math and science prerequisites that you’ll have to take to earn your degree. Which is perhaps why WolframAlpha is the perfect resource for someone taking a STEM class by obligation, rather than by choice. This website bills itself not as a search engine but as a “knowledge engine,” although it’s functionality isn’t much different than the Google homepage. The goal of the site is to make systematic data accessible to the public and easy to understand. You can enter an equation, for instance, and WolframAlpha can help walk you through the process of figuring it out on your own. It’s not a cheat sheet, but it certainly can shave some hours off of study time.

Pocket

Pocket is similar to Fasetto in that it helps you aggregate information into a central repository that you can access on your mobile device. Unlike Fasetto, it’s an aggregator specifically for online content and requires an internet or data connection since it pulls information from a bevy of apps. But while you can save your collaborative assignments on Fasetto to share with your peers and work on no matter what kind of wireless signal you have, Pocket can tag nes stories or videos you see on Twitter or Facebook for you to access later. Basically, you can take a snapchat on all of the things that might distract you during study time then revisit them later in the day when there aren’t as many conflicts.

Doodle

Like Pocket, Doodle has the ability to complement the projects your sharing with your peers on the Fasetto app. This tool allows you to very simply schedule a time for you and your peers to meet for a group project, polls all participants and blocks out that period on everyone’s calendar. It essentially allows you to avoid annoying group texts and chain emails and simply show up without too much back-and-forth.