These have been saving my life (and sleep) as a humanities graduate student.

When I first began as a graduate student, I didn’t know what I needed. I ended up searching the Internet for hours for essentials, as I thought there were certain things I began to need, ignoring the fact I had not even started yet.

Considering I am a first generation student now heading into a master’s program at this point, I’m impressed I had the foresight to try and figure out what to get. I was also really on a limited budget because I refused to take out loans when it came to getting my master’s, so I worked and paid for everything out of pocket when it wasn’t covered by my scholarship or graduate assistantship.

That said, these were the kind of posts I turned to when I was starting out. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but some of the more useful items that I thought were kind of a game changer when it came to getting things done, but also saving money in the long run.

I don’t like to eat out often due to health and financial reasons, so finding an alternative that was healthy and affordable wasn’t too hard to maintain throughout a busy schedule.

Here are the items that got me through graduate school—perhaps I’ll make an expanded blog post later on!

A tablet — in my case, an iPad—and something to write with it.

When I first was accepted into my master’s program, one of the first things I had purchased was an iPad. I had bought it for the purpose of taking notes, but its purpose has evolved throughout the course of my program and time in graduate school. I did download GoodNotes and use that for taking notes, but because I have to read about six hundred pages a week, I also end up using it for annotating documents and books.

I need to highlight my books because there’s a lot of dense information, so when I show up to class discussions, I have sections prepared to discuss and analyze in-person.

But because I also spend a lot of long days on campus with nothing to do in-between classes, what I also do is use my iPad for Netflix and the Kindle app. I run this blog as my side gig and a entertainment purposes, and so this time doubles as something I end up using for work as well. Learning the art of time management has helped me truly as a graduate student.

A good water bottle and salad container for long days.

As I mentioned before, I spend a ton of days on campus where I’m basically there for twelve hours. I essentially condense my work and class schedule so that I only have to go to school, which is thirty minutes away, only on certain days a week.

Many of us in graduate school don’t have a ton of money, and while I have the privilege of living at home with my parents and only commuting a couple days a week, which frees me up to do work on the days I’m off, I’m still on a tight budget compared to the average young working professional.

Because of this, I invested some money in a good salad container, which I also use to make nice rice bowls. I didn’t spend a ton of money on this, but I consider it an investment because of how I didn’t end up buying a ton of lunches on or around campus because of it.

I make really nice healthy rice bowls with a hummus vinaigrette base and Middle Eastern flavors, or if I’m feeling fancy, a Korean style bibimbap. It has a section where it separates the wet ingredients, so I end up keeping it fresher for longer.

I also have the largest size Hydroflask possible. This bad boy is heavy, which means it’s a pain to lug around, but I pretty much just dump it into my backpack after I get sick of carrying it around.

In the winter I put a tea bag in there to make an iced tea, and then I have enough liquids to sustain me throughout the day. I hate spending money on useless things, and these have become the perfect solutions to getting rid of that problem.

Stands for books that keep them propped open.

If you’re a humanities student, you know that you’re going to be reading hundreds of pages a week. When I started my independent study, I really began cracking open huge books and was needing something to prop them up as I viciously took notes at an ungodly hour.

Eventually, I realize that my situation at home wasn’t going to cut it, and that I needed something more to keep me going or I’d lose my sanity and time in the name of trying to take notes from these thick books.

So I purchased a little stand that was prop it open at an angle. I didn’t have to put something heavy on it anymore to keep it open, and I could easily flip the pages so I could access something.

I thought this was such a great purchase in the end because of that, as I also wasn’t craning my neck downwards as well. I starting to have the beginnings of neck pain and stiffness because of these readings, which is what ultimately motivated me to keep going when it came to buying something.

Good writing utensils: highlighters, pens, notebooks.

This one seems kind of obvious, but I didn’t realize until my second semester in graduate school how nice it was to have pens that write really well or highlighters that don’t bleed completely through the pages.

I personally stock up when I’m in New York City at the local Muji stores, as that’s the place to get my to-do lists, pens (I prefer the 0.5 pens in a multicolored pack), and random other stationary that’s practical and not too expensive. I started going to Muji as an undergrad in New York, and now I’m a loyal customer.

I also have some courses that the professors ban electronics, so I also bought a pack of bullet journals that I take notes in. I also use these for my poetry, but note taking has become the staple part of these notebooks.

I write everything in multicolored pens, which means it’s not practical, but it looks cute. Someone once opened up my journal and call it a stream of conscious kind of writing because it has random notes taken from class, then you’ll flip the page and find poems or mini journal entries.

I think it’s a great way to look back on my life someday, though.

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