Personal Responsibility

Personal Responsibility

To be successful in college one must be personally responsible for their actions. Personal responsibility is having integrity, and taking accountability for his or her actions. Doing the right thing and making ethical choices will demonstrate being personally responsible and will result in a successful college experience.

Personal responsibility is taking ownership of their thoughts and actions (Stockdale and Brockett, 2011). Personal responsibility to me is having integrity. What I mean by this is being trust worthy to do the right thing, all the time. For example, plagiarizing work, if someone is trustworthy they will do their own work, rather than copy someone else's and turning that work in for a grade. If someone is to have integrity, they will also report any wrong doings that they are aware of. If you know of someone that is cheating or plagiarizing and you do not report the incident, you are just as much at fault as the other person. Above would be another example of what I believe personal responsibility means, doing the right thing even though it may not be the popular thing to do. Accountability is another trait of being personally responsible. Being accountable means not blaming others for your choices or lack of choices. If you choose not to complete an assignment it is your own fault and there is no one to blame but yourself. It also means having the courage to accept any and all results and/or repercussions for your choices. For example, explaining why we did or did not do a task, or defend our actions (Aquila, 2010). Doing what is right is not always the easiest thing to do, which is why it is so important when talking about personal responsibility. Being true to one's core values and moral commitments (Katz, 2010), is the greatest way to demonstrate being personally responsible.

Personal responsibility is key for college success. Decisions are one of the relationships between responsibility and college success. In order for one to be successful in college they must make tough decisions. Some of these decisions will not be popular ones, which is why it is so important to make the right decision for yourself and not someone else. Your decisions should be well thought out and be in your best interest to ensure college success. For example, your friends want to go out on the town, but you know that you have a term paper due on Monday; the right decision would be to stay in and complete the term paper. Your friends will either accept your decision or give you a hard time. In order for the right decision to be made, you must set your goals and prioritize your activities. Another relationship would be to set your priorities of what is important to you. Obviously, obtaining a degree is one of your priorities, if this is the case, then college and studying should be your first priority. Prioritizing your goals will help in the decision making process also. Once you have established your priorities of college first then you have acted responsibly and starting forming the relationship with college success. College success is a good indicator of you taking school serious and being responsible enough to study, research and complete any and all assignments for each of your classes. If you organize your priorities according to your goals the decisions that must be made in order for you to succeed in society and