Get your project organized. Gather all of your assets -- video, audio and still images -- onto one external hard drive. This will allow you to work on different computers, at school or at home, as required. If possible, back up your assets onto a second external hard drive and put it away for safekeeping until you project is finished.
It's extremely important to keep your project file well-organized, no matter what editing software you are using. This ensures that all of your assets are immediately and easily available to you. One basic method of organizing assets in your project file is to create individual bins for broad categories, such as media, sequences and elements, then create sub-categories of bins and folders within those as needed.
Watch all of your footage. If your project is a documentary that includes interviews, transcribe the content of the interviews or make detailed notes. This will help you determine what your best content is. Start thinking about the structure of your documentary. What information do you want to lead with? What will you end with? How will the rest of your content get you from beginning to end?
If your project is a scripted film, make notes about you favorite takes and angles while you are watching through all of your footage. Pay close attention to what scenes came out better than anticipated, which ones fell flat and which ones you really don't need at all.
Set a deadline for your rough cut and start editing. Don't plan your project so that you're forced to edit in a hurry ahead of the deadline for class. Budget more time for editing than for shooting.
It's a good idea to duplicate your master sequence or timeline at the beginning of each editing session and name it with the date. For example, a sequence file saved on Monday as "RoughCut 022111" would be duplicated and the copy would be named "RoughCut 022311" when you went back to work on it Wednesday. This practice is helpful because it takes a lot of the anxiety out of experimenting by making it quite easy to go back to previous cuts when something you try doesn't work.
Set up a feedback screening a day or two after your rough cut deadline. Be brave; invite your friends, but also invite people whose work you admire, whose opinions your trust and even people who intimidate you a little bit.
Listen to carefully what everyone has to say and take notes. Ask questions and don't get defensive if someone is critical. It's part of your development as a filmmaker to learn to take feedback gracefully. Write everything down and look for criticisms that come up more than once -- this is a good sign that something needs addressing. Figure out what parts of your project need work and get back to editing.
You can do more than one work-in-progress feedback screening if your schedule allows for it, but it's a good idea to invite different people each time.
Screen your fine cut for your film school class.