The Hoya Way to Setting Up Your GCal for School
Back in my day (literally two years ago lmao)...
We used to have physical paper school planners.
Remember those?
With GCal, imagine your paper school planner, but online: linkable to zoom, collaborative, color-coded (of course), and editable.
Whether it's a blessing or a curse that we can micro-manage our time in this way, GCal is every college student's best friend. As you get ready to get the school year started on the right note, one of the first steps you can take is setting up your calendar for the new semester (Spoiler alert: it only takes 5 minutes!).
STEP 1: Go to MyAccess and take note of the courses you are taking
Sadly, like all of us must realize at some point or another upon becoming a college student, getting into Georgetown ≠ getting into classes we want to take.
Moment of silence for those whose MyAccess looks like this:
Anyhow, grab a piece of paper and take note of the course name, section, and CRN of the classes you were actually able to register for (btw: the CRN is that unique 5-digit code you had to copy and paste like a mad man during course registration).
STEP 2: Add all of your registered courses into Coursicle
Some of you may already know about Coursicle and may have used it when you were figuring out your course schedule. If that's the case, this step will come very easily to you.
Simply search up the name of your course and section number in the browse section and add it to a new schedule by clicking the little plus button on the top right-hand corner of each tile.
I do this step because Coursicle will help you import all necessary information including the course name, timing, and location to your GCal so you don't have to do it manually.
STEP 3: Export to GCal
Once you've added all of your courses to a fresh schedule, it's time to export to Google Calendar!
Click on the little export button under the title of your schedule and select "Export to Calendar". Here you can also save your schedule as an image and make it your desktop background if you feel so inclined.
Then, input [August 25, 2021] as the course start date and [December 6, 2021] as the last day of classes. Click add to Google Calendar and then sign in to your Georgetown account.
NOTE: August 25 is a Wednesday, but follows a Monday course schedule. So you'll have to manually adjust this if your Monday and Wednesday classes differ.
Now you can go in and manually adjust entries depending on our school holidays. Here are the most important dates from Georgetown's Academic Calendar:
September 6: Holiday - Labor Day
October 11: Mid-Semester Holiday
November 23-28: Fall Recess/Thanksgiving Break
December 7-8: Study Days
December 9-17: Final Exams
STEP 5: Color-code and Customize
Your Coursicle schedule will have imported as a new calendar under "My Calendars" located on the left-hand side of the screen when you open calendar.google.com. You can check and uncheck that calendar to see your weekly schedule displayed on your screen.
If you'd like to color-code your courses, you can do so by clicking on the entry and selecting "edit event".
You can then change the color according to your preferences. When hitting save, remember to select "edit this and following events" so that all entries for this course in your schedule will be adjusted in one go.
The rest is just preference! For example, I personally like to add my professor's name to the course description so that I can avoid any unnecessary blunders.
Happy GCal-ing!
This whole process shouldn't take you longer than 10 minutes! As always, feel free to drop any questions below or DM us on Instagram @TheHoyaWay