Personal Responsibility, What?

An in-depth look at personal responsibilities would get you a really deep and personal understanding of what it means to be responsible in your own life. A cursory Google search will get you a short definition and a little bit of an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. The cursory search on our dear lady Google will win you the definition that personal responsibility is defined as, “The willingness to both accept the importance of standards that society establishes for individual behavior and to make strenuous efforts to live by those standards.” It also goes on to say that when stuff hits the fan, we don’t look for anyone but ourselves to blame (I’m paraphrasing of course).

Are you getting that empty feeling yet?

Don’t worry, that should and will happen to any college student. Most of all, me. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I was supposed to write this story LAST SEMESTER. That’s right, the kid writing the article about responsibility wasn’t responsible enough to finish his article when he was supposed to. The irony is so thick you can almost taste it. Maybe I’m not the best person on this campus to be writing this story. Maybe I am. Maybe I just put in this sentence to bulk up this article and make it look longer than it is… the world will never know.

Being responsible for yourself might prove to be one of the truly hardest things to do as a college student. I have found it far too easy to prove to myself that assignments that were important were nothing to worry about. I’ve told myself that the test I have at eight in the morning tomorrow isn’t worth studying – all with varying success. The point is that it is a lot easier to convince ourselves to take a nap or binge watch more Jessica Jones on Netflix than it is to do anything even semi-educational.

Nobody makes only responsible decisions all the time, especially not me. A single look at my bank account and spending history can show you that. I’ll (sometimes) be the first to admit that I make irresponsible decisions. We make irresponsible decisions because they are the fun decisions. Nobody needs to feel bad for the decisions they make, especially during this time in their life. After all, we’re just silly college students. We don’t know any better… right? Right??

by Jayce Finnell ’17