A successful life today is all about planning.

Our parents probably stressed it one too many times to us while we were in high school, and with good reason.

“You’ve got to plan ahead if you want to get things done and be successful!” they would say like broken records.

But it should be part of our everyday lives. We have to plan the right time to wake up, when to eat between classes and when to do our homework. Sure, it’s also not a bad idea to plan some fun time into the routine every once in a while for our own sanity.

As college students paying a pretty penny to attend school semester after semester, students should all make sure they’re making the absolute most of their academic time the right way.

We all want to graduate on time and, to ensure that happens, we must plan ahead properly.

But there have been horror stories for those who haven’t planned ahead. Yes, you will probably hate the word “planning” by the end of reading this.

In an article in Monday’s edition of The Daily Eastern News, Suzanne Drake said she was unaware of a professor’s plan to take a sabbatical in the fall, which got in the way of her “plans.”

A sabbatical is a period of leave taken from a professor’s normal work routine for rest and research. The university awards any sabbaticals. Professors can choose to take either one semester with full pay or one year with half pay.

But these periods of leave can cause problems with students who forgot to add the sabbatical variable into their graduation equation.

This isn’t the professors’ faults.

Students, since day one of college, should map out a plan for when they will take certain courses.

Joy Russell, chair of the early childhood, elementary and middle level education department, said the department has never had to cancel a particular class when professors have taken sabbaticals. She also said advisers meet with students each semester to help map out requirements.

“All our students meet every semester with an adviser to develop a long-range plan, then they look at that to see where they’re going,” Russell said.

However, replacing teachers on sabbatical and their classes isn’t always the case.

Glenn Hild, chair of the art department, said in the article that the department doesn’t always replace professors when they take sabbaticals, but said it would work with students who need a particular class to meet graduation requirements.

“We might look to see if there was another course they could substitute,” Hild said.

But for students like Drake, a senior art major concentrating in 3-D studio art, who need a particular class or more experience with certain professors, we say plan ahead. Sabbaticals shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Don’t take on a whole new semester of work because you didn’t think to plan ahead. Be prepared, plan your college coursework ahead as much as possible and know when a professor whose class you need to take is going on sabbatical. Success really is all about planning.