One Year of Having My Own Laptop

My first family computer came home when I was 3, maybe 4, years old. It was supposed to be my mother’s work computer, but she wasn’t home from 8 to 6, so who going to stop me from using it? I remember learning how to start the computer, insert CDs and open Word by watching my mother do it. I would do the same when she wasn’t around and had a blast printing all the gibberish I managed to type on Word. Then, I learned how to use miniclip.com and spent as much time as I could playing games like A Dog in the House and those saloon games (managing customers and giving them facials and manicures). For the longest time, the primary purpose of a computer, for me, was playing games and listening to music.

It was only in Grade 4, that I typed something on Word for an assignment. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was probably for the science fair. I did a project on wind power and coal power; typed all of it on the family computer. This continued till last year. I did all of my schoolwork and some personal work on the family computer. I had an iPad, so I wasn’t dependent on the laptop for entertainment. The only drawback to using the family computer was that it was divided three ways: me, my mom, and my dad. We sort of gave my mom priority for using it because my dad didn’t bring his work home and my mom always had a lot of writing and research to do. So, I would only ask for it when I absolutely needed it, like for assignments or when it was exams season and I needed to study from slides or large pdf documents.

Then, on July 31, 2019, my dad bought me my own laptop. Only mine to use; nobody to share it with. It’s an HP laptop (the details of which I can’t find on the internet anymore ☹) and I wanted to share my experience with it.

The first thing I will say is, regardless of the model and brand, having your own laptop is a blessing if you like to write, lookup/research a lot of things and/or make lists and charts. The convenience that comes with a laptop has made my life so much easier. I can do my work anytime the inspiration strikes, be it night or day. The reassurance that I don’t have to ask someone if the laptop is free to use motivates me, even more, to use my laptop as much as I can. I still use it for entertainment from time to time, but most of what I do is related to making my academic life less stressful.

Here are a few things I have used/done in the past year to make the most of my laptop.

1) Download Apps and Utilize the Taskbar: I like to stay updated even when I’m away from my phone, so, over time, I’ve downloaded a lot of the apps that I use on a daily basis, on my computer. I have the desktop version of Instagram, Netflix and Outlook pinned to my taskbar because Instagram is my go-to social media app, my university uses Outlook as it’s email portal and Netflix is my saviour from boredom (although the boredom of trying to find something to watch can be unbearable at times, too). Besides that, I have Word and Excel pinned to my taskbar because, as you know, I write a lot, and I love organizing information into tables and charts. Lastly, I have the Sticky Notes app pinned as well because I like having my to-do list pop up the second my laptop turns on. Other apps I use, but less frequently, include Grammarly, Powerpoint, Zoom, and Paint 3D (I do quite a bit of editing for my website and other creative projects I participate in so Paint 3D comes in handy). Haha, I see I didn’t mention Chrome anywhere, but I think that’s a given for a PC (Microsoft Edge is just Internet Explorer in fancier clothing).

2) Make folders: My ways of organizing work are constantly evolving but one thing that always sticks is having folders for everything. It started because my mom would ‘tut-tut’ every time she saw my desktop on the family computer. Besides folders for my phone backups and one gigantic folder for ALL my work, I had no organization whatsoever. She showed me hers and now I never have any documents visible on my desktop unless I am actively working on them (with my terrible memory, I need to be reminded that I have things in progress). On the left side of my screen, I have desktop shortcuts to my favourite/most frequently used apps + a shortcut to the Downloads folder (I’ll explain that in a bit), and on the left, I have over 11 folders, most of which I use almost every day. Furthermore, I number them by priority. Till June, ‘High School’ was ‘1. High School,’ and ‘University’ was ‘5. University.’ But now they’re the other way around: ‘1. University’ and ‘4. High School.’ I have a folder for my Study with Aarushi documents and pictures, one for my writing unrelated to SWA, one for things I consider helpful to my development that I call ‘5. Personal’, a bunch of folders for backups from my phones and some for work I help other people with. Along with those, I keep shortcuts to my screenshots folder and downloads folder because I use those features a lot. I’ve noticed that I tend to forget to move things from Downloads to Desktop or to the appropriate folder, so keeping a shortcut to it helps. I can’t even begin to explain all the reasons the screenshots feature/folder is helpful, but I use it multiple times a day. Needless to say, my folders have folders within them, like the university one has folders for each course, administrative documents, textbooks and more. The high school one is similar. Study with Aarushi has a folder for each of the platforms I work with (Website, Instagram, Facebook etc.), and the Website folder has several more within it. I love my folders XD.

3) Use Chrome Extensions: I went on a spree of downloading as many extensions as I could find that I thought would be remotely helpful to me, so I have a lot of them. I don’t use many, but the ones I do are quite useful. The first one I have is McAfee Antivirus extension that helps detect viruses in downloads and websites. Super helpful because I like to watch Doctor Who online and the websites are definitely not reliable. The next one is Grammarly; it’s saved my butt a million times and works great for a free extension. Next, I have AdBlock – helpful for the same reasons as McAfee. I have a file converter called Convertio because I do a lot of Word to PDF work. Lastly, I have an extension called Momentum that gives me pretty backgrounds for when I open a new tab on Chrome. I also have Forest, for working without distractions, and Honey, for discounts, but I don’t use them often.

4) Utilize the bookmark feature: If you have a Google account and you don’t use the bookmarks tab to your advantage, what are you doing? My favourite feature is being able to sync my bookmarks, so I can open my bookmarks on my phone when my laptop isn’t on. Websites I’m always using are at the start of the bar (Gmail, YouTube, WhatsApp Web, Canva etc.) and then most of my bookmarks are sorted into, you guessed it, folders! I’ve got one for almost everything I frequently think about (SWA, University, High School, My Interests, Goals, Read Later etc.). I like to keep the bar organized because seeing all my bookmarks in no particular order has kept me up at night more than once. The ease of access I have with all my bookmarks in front of me, and the time I save, it all makes me feel happier and less anxious about getting my work done.

5) Download Grammarly: If you are a high school or university student, Grammarly is a must! All I’ll say is it picks up way more mistakes than Word does. Definitely download it everywhere you can (desktop, Office, extension, iOS keyboard)

6) Have specific pages open when Chrome starts up: I started using this feature in Grade 12, when I was opening my student email and Google Docs multiple times a day for school. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon this feature but you Click on Settings > Scroll down to ‘On Startup’ > Select the ‘Open a specific page or set of pages’ option and then paste the links of the websites you want to have open whenever you start Chrome. It’s changed for me since last year. It was just Google Docs and my email, then I added the dashboard for my website, then Canva because I was frequently using it for one of my clubs. Then I got rid of everything, except for my dashboard, once high school ended and added the websites my university uses. I’m considering adding YouTube as well because I use it a lot for background music and life hack videos. This feature saves a lot of time and easily reminds me of any work I have to get done if it’s related to one of the websites. It can be a bit of hassle if you have the habit of closing Chrome and then remembering something else you had to do, because those websites open every single time you start up Chrome. If you want to still use the feature, but avoid that, you can right-click on the Chrome icon and click on Google Chrome. It opens a new window with just a start-up tab – no specific websites.

That’s everything I could think of for now. I’ll make a part 2 if I remember anything else. I think my laptop is a blessing for me and if you can, get yourself one too. It has improved the quality of my work and was the reason I had such a wonderful experience in Grade 12. Without this laptop, I would have never thought about starting Study with Aarushi and I wouldn’t have had so much fun with writing. Thank you, lappytoppy. I wuw you.

Till my next post, toodles. – Aarushi