While in high school you can get away with having one binder for all seven of your classes and borrowing a pencil and paper every day from the cute boy or girl who sits next to you.

In college, this is the recipe for failure.

Being organized and prepared for each one of your classes will not only help you when trying to fetch the assignment your professor wants to work on two weeks after it was given but it will help you receive better grades than you ever have before.

You can start getting organized by making sure you have a backpack and simply buying a planner.

Having a backpack or some type of bag may seem obvious to some but for others, it was never a tool that was used throughout their middle or high school years.

But having one and packing it with pens, pencils, scantrons and whatever else you need will ensure you are at least prepared for class in the barest of ways.

Having a planner is the easiest way to excel in your organizing skills but is often neglected because people are worried about looking like a nerd or whatever the reason may be.

Well, newsflash it's actually cool to get good grades, attend class, and be on top of your assignments in college.

In high school, it may have been easy to keep track of your assignments because you went to each one of your classes every day but in college, this won't fly.

You will miss more deadlines than you even know you missed if you don't obtain a planner or some type of notebook to write all of your assignments in.

(Tip: Write your assignment in the box of the day your assignment is due but also write it down under every day until you do it leading up to the due date.)

The next thing you should do is purchase either a binder for each one of your classes or have one binder for each of the days you have classes.

For example, if you have Algebra and Literature on Tuesdays and Thursdays but Biology and Writing on Mondays and Wednesdays have one binder for your Tuesday/Thursday classes and one binder for your Monday/Wednesday classes.

This way you will never bring the wrong binder to class and you will always be prepared for all of your classes that day.

If you want to get super fancy with your organizing:

1) make sure each of your binders are different colors so you never mix them up

2) buy tabs so that you can separate class assignments, homework assignments, and tests/quizzes

3) print out the syllabus for each of your classes and place them at the front of your binder/class section of your binder if you are sharing one for multiple classes.

Finally, check your planner each day to make sure you don't have any assignments due at midnight or the next day that you haven't completed yet.

Make a checklist every day if necessary of all the assignments you need to complete before midnight or the next day and check them off as you complete them.

Happy organizing!