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I would like to share a few of my most effective study strategies, which help me stay focused and organized as I juggle full-time work, my large family, and a full-time M.A. program.

I have created this infographic for my students, but I find it also applies to me.

I have previously used Zotero to organize my personal library (I usually loaded my references from Google Scholar or library databases and organized my source by a course number and projects). Unfortunately, Zotero does not allow me to annotate my pdfs easily, therefore, I used to load my pdfs to Google Drive and used KAMI (from within Google Drive) to annotate my sources.

An alternative tool, which combines both bibliographic management and annotations, is Mendeley. I have decided to move my Zotero library there recently. I find it very convenient because it stores my pdfs on the cloud and makes them accessible on all my devices, so  I am able to read and annotate my sources while commuting to work on the bus. One disadvantage of Mendeley is that it does not work well with Google Docs, where all my documents are stored, so I am working around it by citing my source in a Word document.

I also find concept mapping extremely helpful when drafting and structuring my assignments.

I would love to hear how you organize your sources and what strategies work for you!