I was never an overachiever in high school, or at least, I never thought of myself as one. I was smart, sure, but lots of kids are smart and lots of kids get good grades and participate in afterschool activities. I never felt in any way special. My grades were satisfactory to me, and to my parents, and I made it through without too many bumps and bruises— except for in one particular category: Notebook checks.

Give me a quiz, I’d be able to guess my way through it with brevity if I was somewhat unprepared. Give me a project, I could start it the night before and finish it in homeroom without so much as a shrewd look from a teacher. But, give me a week of notice for a notebook check and every opportunity to 'Make My Notebook Great Again,' and I was a complete and utter trainwreck.

My high school notebooks weren’t so much notebooks as they were unbound books of mix-matched articles and essays and outlines. They were stuffed to the brim and folders for one class would become binders for another. God forbid you ask me where my yellow emergency card was, I’d be lucky to make it through the year without dropping dead from all the anxiety over where the paper that had all my family to call on it (in the case that I did, in fact, drop dead). I received helpful hints from teachers through the years, though nothing could stop what had been bestowed upon me at birth. I am chronically disorganized.

Living with chronic disorganization is something I have come to terms with. I can keep a living room clean because there’s no stuff in a living room, just furniture and floors to be swiffered. These are things I can handle. I am not dirty, and my laundry is done at the pace that one might expect from any college student living alone who has to walk to the laundromat and pay to do it: enough.

I’m hardworking, in the workspace I’m generally well-liked and not particularly scatterbrained— again, no more than the average college student, living alone and working. I do, however, find myself swimming in seas of documents, both in real life and on my computer. I can’t alphabetize or place markers on pages for the life of me. My closet is in constant disarray, and if I’m looking for matching socks I should just quit before I even begin.

Part of living with chronic disorganization is also living with the fact that you will lose things that absolutely matter to you, like a $100 gift card that I REMEMBER TAKING OUT OF THE CONTAINER AND SAYING, “This is a lot of money, better put this somewhere important!” and then NOT PUTTING IT ANYWHERE IMPORTANT AT ALL.

Living with chronic disorganization is living with a constant nagging voice that you deliberately ignore for absolutely no reason, instead succumbing to the desire to just shove. Shove papers in folders, shirts in drawers, trinkets in smaller drawers. And while it sounds easy to control, it isn’t. You can lead a horse to a 7 pocket accordion folder, but that doesn’t mean it will remember where that permission slip is.

There are ways of coping with disorganization, and while they’re not the best way to deal with what society might call “unhealthy habits,” they seem, to the chronic patients of disorganization, the only way. I have developed something of a perpetual professor look. That is, I carry with me at all times all of my binders, notebooks, oftentimes a leisure book, textbooks, sometimes my gym clothes, sometimes my computer, etc. Always.

I am sure to bring everything I could possibly need with me, because chances are that even if I don’t need my folder for English 306, within that folder lies another paper for Genome Biology, which might come in handy considering all that I can find in my Genome Biology folder is a doodle I did of a puppy eating ice cream.

I have also learned to never blame myself for any of my disorganization. In high school, I had a teacher who would always tell me that, “If I could just get organized...” The world would be a better place, apparently, if I was organized. But what if I couldn’t be? What if I couldn’t be organized because I didn’t have time to be organized? What if I couldn’t keep my binders in order because I got too many handouts? Yeah! With such a simultaneously defeatist and optimistic internal monologue, who could deny you?

When I moved to the house that I grew up in, back in the third grade, I used to tell my mom that I simply couldn’t keep my room clean because it was too big and there were too many places for things to end up. And then, when I was in the fifth grade, I switched rooms with my sister. Suddenly, I couldn’t keep my room clean because my room was too small and there wasn’t enough space for my things to go. Now, I live in an apartment and my room is still cluttered because there’s just not enough storage. Even as I type this now my internal monologue is nodding its head because it knows that I can easily say that and people will believe me.

The honest truth about chronic disorganization is that it’s not life ruining, but it is habit forming. If you struggle to keep up with the clutter of life, try taking notes on the OneNote App on your PC, because all you have to do is click a tab and it starts a new, dated section for you, no energy required. Try putting all of your important things in one important place that isn’t just a good idea in that moment, but a good idea in general. You never know when you’ll need a $100 gift card (always). As for the other things in life aside from your notes that need organizing, you either fight or flight. And if you’re like me, you’re fighting to fly.