Thinking in a large sense, personal responsibility is fundamental to a thriving and productive society. Without it we create a society of weak and dependent individuals that know not how to think or take action for themselves. Personal responsibility can be defined as follows: recognizing one’s own duty of holding themselves morally, legally and mentally accountable.
My process to define personal responsibility goes something like this: First break down the words to their bare meaning. When I look at the word responsible I realize that its meaning has to do with being accountable to someone or something. Personal is meant just as it’s said, relating to myself. Adding these definitions together you get ‘being accountable to myself.’ And what aspects do I see being covered by this definition? As I stated previously, both morally and legally. But on a deeper level, mentally, the root of responsibility. Personal responsibility is the core to successful education. This can begin at a very young age, even grade school. Students can learn to take initiative for their own education by simply bringing home an assignment and clearly communicating the teacher’s expectations to his parents. Pride is instilled into a child when he takes responsibility for his assignments and experiences triumph. These simple lessons learned in childhood are the building blocks for all future achievements, including, but not limited to, college education. Part of developing personal responsibility is that of goal-setting. Anyone who has been even slightly successful, has done it through setting attainable goals along the way. Success does not happen by chance. It takes hard work and dedication. This is where personal responsibility comes into play. Just setting a goal is not enough to actually attain that goal. One must hold himself accountable to that goal. When personal attainable goals are not set, one
