Graduating, what stuff should I keep?

[stoid]

I'm finishing up a few summer courses to complete my bachelor's degree in a few days, and I realized that I have a paper box full of materials that were handouts and notes from my courses. Do I really need to hang on to all this stuff? What paperwork/notes should I keep, and what stuff can be pitched? I haven't really looked through the stuff, but partly because it is all so recent and mostly fresh in my mind that I haven't had to.

Thanks for your advice!

 

[GoCubsGo]

Packrats are my worst enemy. I was with one for a very long time and pretty much developed those tendencies.
As a graduate I had to determine what would be useful later on. The answer is, nothing. All I kept was my thesis because that was something I planned on building on later on and planned on using later on down the road. Everything else was dumped.
I also have the same idea for my master's degree. However, everything that I intend on keeping will be scanned and saved in a pdf. Zipped and backed up. Less clutter that way.

 

[adrianblaine]

First of all, congrats on the graduating!

I think it depends a lot on what you studied vs. what you are actually going to do. I just finished my master's in architecture and will be working in an Architecture office, so 90% of my school work directly applies. I didn't really keep any homework, but kept all of my books and all of my projects. I'm much more likely to need my book from Environmental Tech II, but not the quiz I had to take... that kind of thing.

Basically, decide what you think you might need down the road, and toss the other junk, because that's what it is in the end...

 

[furcalchick]

i'm keeping my stuff from college, all my notes, etc, but i'm a bit of a packrat. but if you're crunched for space, keep all your project papers and notes from classes you thought were very important to you. other stuff can go in the dump. priority goes to classes in your major though, since you'll be likely be using those in the near future.

 

[stoid]

If I decide to go for a Master's degree at some point down the road (perhaps related to my Computer Science/Visual Arts bachelor's, perhaps not), is it likely that any of the stuff from the classes themselves will help me avoid taking redundant classes?

 

[GoCubsGo]

If I decide to go for a Master's degree at some point down the road (perhaps related to my Computer Science/Visual Arts bachelor's, perhaps not), is it likely that any of the stuff from the classes themselves will help me avoid taking redundant classes?

In my case I never looked back at the stuff I tossed. Granted I tossed this stuff 1 year into the master's. The only thing that helped me to get out of taking redundant classes in grad school was my transcripts. They saw the class, they were provided the course descriptions from the catalog I kept, and the grade. That was all I needed.

 

[TheAnswer]

If I decide to go for a Master's degree at some point down the road (perhaps related to my Computer Science/Visual Arts bachelor's, perhaps not), is it likely that any of the stuff from the classes themselves will help me avoid taking redundant classes?

Probably not, but your notes might help your review some background info that your classes might assume you have remembered.

 

[Mord]

I purge after every term.

 

[kitki83]

Thats a good question, I want to archive my stuff, I wonder how can you scan so much. I really do not want to do it one by one, does kinkos offer some sort of scanning?

 

[mkrishnan]

I actually want to dissent from the others and suggest that you keep one very specific thing. Every course should have provided you with a syllabus. Keep as many of those as you can find, particularly from jr/sr and higher level courses. If possible, scan them, put them in iPhoto or in a folder somewhere, and forget about them. But keep them if at all possible. It won't be that much paper, even if you keep it physically -- maybe 50 or 60 pages.

However, it may come in very handy if you ever go to graduate school and find that courses are transferrable for graduate credit or there is some confusion over whether courses meet entry requirements for grad school. If you're in a field where there's any kind of professional certification or licensure (e.g. the professional engineer credential, etc), then again, for that too, this is documentation you may be expected to keep. You don't have to have it all, but if you keep that small amount of stuff, it can help you later.

 

[iSaint]

Whatever is on your computer is all you need. Even then, you probably won't access old materials much. School is just to get your mind working anyway.

 

[sushi]

I think that it depends a bit on what your degree is in.

Mine was an engineering degree, so I am glad that I kept some particular papers/homework, textbooks and references.

Some mentioned converting to PDF. I would recommend only doing so if you save/backup to a non-volitile medium such as CD/DVD-R.

 

[ToddW]

keep all your books as well as keeping any special projects that may have done.

 

[iRachel]

I think that it depends a bit on what your degree is in.

I agree. In my case, I knew I was going to grad school, so I saved many of my books, as well as a few intro-level texts that I knew would serve as good reference books. I pitched a lot of supplementary material, and notes from gen. ed. classes I knew I wouldn't need any more. I did keep some notes from classes in the field I knew I was continuing in, and they have occasionally been useful (though not as useful as I thought when I kept them.) The books, on the other hand, were a good thing to keep.

 

[Abstract]

Graduating, what stuff should I keep?

The degree.



Oh, and your textbooks. Almost all of them unless they are useless AND boring. There's no point selling a textbook if you're going to pursue further studies, even if they don't seem very relevant to what you're studying.