Tired of expensive yet crappy spiral notebooks that fall apart? Always losing them because they look like everyone else's? Now you can design your own and show off how organized you are!

Step 1: Materials

Materials:
1. A stack of 50-100 pages of paper (graph, white, whatever you want)
Cost: Free. Just snatch some from the printing facilities on your campus

2. Printing
Cost: Also free since most campuses have free printing facilities

3. A copying center much like Kinko’s
Cost: A few calories, depending on how far away it is.

4. Binding at your local copy center
Cost: $2 on my campus. Might be slightly more/less for yours

Step 2: Step 1: Notebook Cover

Print out a notebook cover (on 8.5” x 11”) with the subject you are taking, your name, your email, or whatever you feel like.
You can also do this by hand or draw something.
Also print out office hours or other useful information pertaining to that class.

Step 3: Step 2: Paper

Take free paper from printing facilities. Or if you want to be fancy, buy graph paper/special paper.
And finally, if you want to be both cheap and fancy, print grids on white paper using campus printing. This might annoy whoever is waiting for the printer though.

Step 4: Step 3: Binding

Organize your papers. Notebook cover on top, blank paper in the middle. Please don’t do this backwards.

Take it to your campus copying center and have them bind it. Usually, this will also come with a clear front and some sort of black backing. You can also ask for both sides to be clear. I tend to use a clear cover for both sides and put office hours, TA emails, and room numbers on the bottom facing down so I can readily access whatever information I need.