Personal Responsibility Is an Obligation to Oneself.

Personal responsibility is an obligation to oneself. Obviously you can't control every aspect of life, however you can absolutely control the decisions that you make. To do this takes a lot of thought and self-discipline. You have to make an effort to first compile all of the options available. Not everyone makes this effort. Rather they simply choose take the easiest option without really considering what else could be done. This type of behavior represents more of a reactive approach to life's events; simply taking the easy way out.

Taking personal responsibility is a proactive approach to dealing the things that life throws at you. It all begins with setting challenging goals; things you want to accomplish in your lifetime. Then the next step is to set the parameters or the rules by which you will live by. There are various approaches to this including personal moral systems or personal ethical codes. Basically, you should develop the rules and standards which you would like to live by. Having these two aspects already in place, goals and personal standards, are more than half the work. Then a decision point is identified you basically just have to apply these aspects to the individual situation. For example, since I would have goals about becoming a professional, then I must learn to think and behave like a professional in all situations that I encounter. Although, situations may vary, the goals of the decisions are already set.

Being successful in college is a challenging endeavor for most people and there are many different ideas of what success means. For instance, if you measure success by just having a diploma to hang on the wall then that is one way to rate success. Other approaches may include where you stand in class rankings or what your overall grade point average is; or maybe it is what kind of job you are able to get after you graduate. These are common criterion for determining success in college by many students and other interested parties.

To me however, I believe education has value in itself. While I am going to college with hopes of gaining the credentials necessary to begin a professional career, I also realize that I need the skills being taught so that once I do get a foot in the door somewhere I can excel in my job as well. I think this is where so many students lose sight of what is really important. They think college is all about getting a job, having the diploma on the wall, or having something great to put on a resume. While all these are important aspects to college, the most fundamental part of is learning. Learning the material and building a superior skill set should be the highest priority and the other aspects should be subsidiary considerations. Personal responsibility in this situation is proactively making sure that understand all of the material while also doing so within time and other organizational constraints.

By applying my personal interpretation of what personal responsibility means, as well as my concept of what success in college is all about, I have developed an outline of how I can meet my goals in this environment. Basically, it all boils down to taking a proactive approach towards my education at every step of the way. It is always best to begin assignments as soon as possible to ensure that there is ample time to overcome any obstacles that present themselves such as not understanding the material or not having all the needed resources to complete a task. The old adage states that you should not put off for tomorrow what you can do today. I think this is a good strategy for collage and it represents the foundation of my plan for taking a proactive approach to my personal education and should also hopefully result in earning high marks in the various classes.