B4Grad: Homework Planner App

This app is marketed towards college and university students, but it’s just as helpful to a high schooler such as myself. B4Grad has made so many things easier for me, as I can glance down at my phone and see what I have due coming up soon and I can get to work sooner rather than later. While it hasn’t completely abolished my procrastinating tendencies (though that would be REALLY cool to see), it has cracked down on them, and I’m now passing my classes! Some things I would like to see are customizable alert times and the addition of other events. With the current system, you only receive alerts for one month, two weeks, one week, and three days in advance for long term assignments. If that system was expanded to allow for more suggestions like 3 weeks, 5 days, 2 months, etc, it would make the experience more friendly for first time users. By “the addition of other events” as I called it, your three options are Lectures, Labs, and Tutorials. Adding options like Projects and/or Presentations would help out a lot, especially for assignments that don’t fit the previous three niches. Overall, I am truly impressed with the quality of the app and the extent of its abilities. I hope to see many more updates in the future!

In the past, I’ve tried everything from Outlook calendars to handwritten planners to Post-It notes, but I’ve never found a tool as convenient as this app for organizing my schedule. I like how I can store all the contact information for my professors, as well as their office hour times and location. However, I’m not able to enter specific days for their office hours. For example, professors usually have office hours on 2-3 days each week, not everyday. It’s also very satisfying to swipe away homework that is completed! It really helps me stay motivated to get everything on my screen done so I can see all the scratched off items! It also serves as my one source of truth for what isn’t done. For example, if I need to make a discussion post on Canvas and comment on two other people’s posts, Canvas will show the assignment as completed after making the first post. However, I don’t swipe it away from B4Grad until I’ve made all three of the required posts in the discussion. Overall, this app is super useful for keeping my life in order, and I highly recommend!

Procrastination can make life really difficult, especially if you’re like me who is a junior in high school with severe ADHD, working mostly from the not- so- comfort of my obnoxiously loud home. I downloaded this app with no standards, as I’ve tried many different downloads to stay on top of my work. this app has made it so much easier to know exactly what I have do and when it’s needed to be turned in, and i’ve had significant less trouble forgetting assignments. However, I multitask by doing something on my phone and my computer when I am working, and would love to have a Google Chrome extension to this app. it would make it even easier to see my assignments on my Chromebook along with my phone. I don’t know if this is possible, but the creators might want to look into this, as it would probably draw more audiences with high school mandated chrome books/ laptops.