Student Uses New Academic Planner for a Record Four Days

With the arrival of the new semester comes classic traditions and newfound interests. For College sophomore Jennifer Roberts, the new semester is marked by one primary event — the purchase of a brand new academic planner.

For Roberts, purchasing an academic planner has become a sacred tradition. On the first day of every semester, she strolls into the Penn bookstore and purchases one brand new Penn-branded planner, which she spends hours annotating and color-coding.

“New, year, new me!” exclaimed Roberts, as she proceeded to jot down a note in her planner to complete an assignment, which she would later hand in two weeks after the deadline.

“I think the reason I’ve been doing so poorly in school is definitely my lack of organization,” said Roberts, who is involved in zero clubs aside from her sorority. “I’m just so busy that I have trouble keeping track of all my events.”

In past semesters, Roberts’ planners have been found less than one week after being purchased in various GSRs, Vietnamese restaurants, and even in between bricks on Locust Walk. Gabe Owens (C ’19), who has recovered two of these planners so far, noted that “the first day of the planner is always meticulously labeled and organized, but then, after three days, it just devolves into illegible scribbles.”

Reports indicate that, already this semester, she accidentally left her planner “somewhere in DRL” and didn’t bother to go back to pick it up. While she may now be infinitely more likely to fail all of her classes, we wish the best for Roberts in future semesters as she attempts to reach the coveted one-week mark.