Let Color Catapult You to Top Grades!

Color-coding can take the gray out of academic life. Do you hate every one of the following?

1. Black and white texts with those miniscule footnotes?

2. Black and white papers with those big blank spaces?

3. Black pens and number 2 pencils for computerized forms?

4. Black smears all over ripped, jammed white printer paper?

5. White chalk creaks and dust all over cracked blackboards?

6. Institutional white sheets, washcloths, towels, and underwear?

7. Holey white plastic bags with screaming advertisements?

8. Freaking Bridezilla costumes!

Then, turn academic work into freaking fun! Just add your favorite colors to all your assignments. At the same time, you can indulge an intense love and respect for your very own precious privacy. The colors can be just for you, not your overworked, overly conscientious instructors.

MLA may proclaim: "Everything's gotta be done OUR way!" And, for Humanities assignments, that's frequently true-but only if teachers demand to see EVERY draft. If not, we're on our own to create drafts that drive us color-crazy.

We can choose the colors we want to surround us. Consider the deepest turquoise or the most royal purple. Try out fire engine red, Chinese red, passion pink, magenta, lavender-blue, indigo, Prussian blue, gangrene green, blue spruce, blue denim, sunburst orange, lemon splash, mint julep, lime aid, or passion fruit.

The stationery department at our local pharmacy offers cheap bright pens and markers for taking notes and making nearly endless revisions. Art stores also let the seriously color-deprived luxuriate in their favorite shades. The tipsy "A" on our AutoShapes toolbar lets us go high tech with color, too.

Colored construction paper can make even rough drafts of research papers look like crazy quilts or high-flying kites. Legal pads can offer relief from too-white supplies as well. Writing tools and resources do NOT need to be boring: Let this rule be our mantra for making magic, instead of mayhem, out of dull work routines.

The real magic in this strategy could not be simpler. Make work fun, and we will want to get it done. Integrate color into a blah project, and our audience will feel our new-found enthusiasm. Highlighters provide not just a study tool but a basic key to good organization.

The importance of color lies in its high response level. Once we begin to use it FOR, instead of AGAINST us, quick action becomes second nature. We can visualize key points immediately by making them jump out at our eyes. We can even revive our interest in blah subjects that threaten to bore us.

The website Logodesign explains the psychological appeal of color this way: "Of all the forms of non-verbal communication, color is the most instantaneous method of conveying messages and meanings.... Among other uses, color stimulates and works synergistically with all of the senses...."

As this site emphasizes, advertisers use colors to seduce and intoxicate buyers. Why shouldn't we use them to buy into good grades, hard work, and a sense of design that morphs confusion into modern art? If we respond subliminally to color, why not apply it to ho-hum boredom until our work is gorgeous--and irresistable?