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Personal Responsibility

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Submitted By jttrin23
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Personal Responsibility
9/27/2014
GEN200

Personal Responsibility
What is Personal responsibility? Haskins (2009) defined personal responsibility as the willingness to both accept the importance of standards that society establishes for individual behavior and to make strenuous personal efforts to live by those standards. He later goes on to say that if you fail to meet those standards that you do not place the blame on others. So what does this have to do with taking college courses? Even though you are not born responsible, personal responsibility is important not only for college but throughout life because no one is going to accomplish your goals for you and you cannot blame anyone else for your failures to succeed in school.
Personal responsibility is important not only in college but in your life as a whole. In college you have numerous tasks such as completing assignments, studying, and taking exams. It is your responsibility and no one else’s to be prepared and willing to complete these tasks. Without the personal responsibility needed to complete your assignments, study for class work and pass your exams, you could find yourself falling behind and failing courses. However, that is just college. From the beginning of your existence personal responsibility is needed to succeed at even minor events throughout your life. Your parents begin to instill responsibility as a value that is needed to become a valuable member of society. You need personal responsibility to succeed in elementary, middle and high school however, your parents are also there to push you and make sure you graduate. If you start to fail your parents ground you, beat you or punish you somehow and usually in most cases it works. In college though, you are an adult and failure falls on your shoulders. Even if your parents are paying for your college it is still your responsibility to be a good steward of your parent’s money.
Personal responsibility is needed to accomplish anything in life. No matter how small or how minor you might feel it is, succeeding in it is far better than failing. However, if you do happen to fail at something take responsibility and do not place blame. Too many people are too quick to point a finger when they fail. The professor was against me, I had other obligations, my dog died; there are always excuses. Instead of placing blame, take responsibility, determine the problem and work towards fixing the issues. That way the next time around you will be better prepared and able to succeed.
When you have a goal in life you need to stay on track and make sure that you accomplish them. Your short term goals are easier to stick with because you see the results and fruits of your labor working and can see the end in sight. Your long term goals are the harder ones to stick with because you begin to feel like they are out of reach. This is where personal responsibility comes into play. No one is going to accomplish your goals for you. You have to keep pushing and chugging along and stay determined to meet your goals. I can personally attest to this, I have been in college for 13 years and do not have an associate’s degree. I began to feel like a degree just was not in my future and began to slack in my classes. I had too many paths and could not stick with one because I felt like I was working hard and getting know where. This back fired on me and now I am more determined than ever to finish my degree.
Personal responsibility is not a trait that you are born with it is taught and must be a trait that you want to live by; taking responsibility for your actions can be hard sometimes but it is required for you to be successful. No matter the size of the goal you are trying to accomplish you need to take responsibility to accomplish it. You are going to face some obstacles but don’t let that hinder you and push forward, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. For me it is going to take some better time management and less procrastination to live up to my own goals for school. It will also take a lot of self-control to say no to family on days that I wanted to do homework. You have to pay the price in advance to achieve your goal. If you want to be a successful professional or a businessman, till you achieve your goal, you have to forego your leisure activities to some extent (“Achieving your goals” Jun 2013).
In conclusion, personal responsibility is crucial to any student who wants to graduate with his or her degree. Even though a person is not born responsible they are taught it and should embrace it throughout their life. Your degree or any goal for that matter will not accomplish itself; it is the individual’s responsibility to ensure their goals are being monitored and completed. If one is to fail in accomplishing a goal, there should be no finger pointing and accept that there will be road bumps and not road blocks in their journey to successfully completing their college career.

References
Hwang, Y. G. (1995). Student apathy, lack of self-responsibility and false self-esteem are failing american schools. Education, 115(4), 484. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196419057?accountid=458
Achieving your goals. (2013, Jun 11). Daily News Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1366072472?accountid=458

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