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I Choose to Be Successful in College

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Submitted By adorabelcrafts
Words 632
Pages 3
Dawnmarie Abel
GEN/ 200
I choose to be successful in college

Personal responsibility is something that I have had to learn to live my life by. Within the past 2 years I have found out that I had Bi-polar, my son has Asperger’s, my husband was an alcoholic, I left my husband, I have been a custody battle for over a year having to drive to New York from VA once or twice a month, and decided to go back to school. For the first year I just made excuses and blamed everyone but myself for all the problems that were going on in my life. So instead of making excuses I am going to take personal responsibility for the amount of time, energy and resources I use to be successful in college and in life allowing nothing to stand in the way of me reaching my goals. When it comes to personal responsibility I have learned that it is a choice, my choice. If something isn’t going right in my life it is my choice to make it better, live my life the way it is, or make excuses. For years my ex told me I was a waste of space and that I wouldn’t amount to anything. At that time I accepted that was how my life was going to be but after going back to school the first time I found this saying “If it is to be, it is up to me!” I have made a poster of this saying and posted it in my office; a week later I moved out and left my husband. I know now that no matter what is going on in my life it is my choice how I will let it affect me. My college success is completely my personal responsibility. I get to choose the amount of time I will spend of each assignment, and the amount of energy I will use finding and using the resources available to be successful, how we use our time, energy and resources will determine our success or failure in college. We can choose to do EVERYTHING it takes to be successful and reach all our goals or we can sit back and make excuses which will just lead to failure. My preliminary plan to practice responsibility in my education is to put my school work on the top of my list. Being a single mother this is not always easy but I figure if I focus on my school work when the kids are in school or at their friends, when they don’t need my attention, It will free me up when they do need me and my school work will still get done. By doing this I should have enough time to do all my assignments, reading and class discussions but I have worked it out with my older kids that if I need more time they will help with the younger kids. I plan on learning and using all the resources I can to gain all the knowledge I can. As happy as I am when I get an A or full points for that week’s assignments that great or those points mean NOTHING if I didn’t learn from the assignment. The last thing I plan on doing and most likely the most important is to take care of my health … eating, sleeping and taking my medicine to make sure I am in the best health since if I am sick I will not be able to give everything my all. I truly feel that if I stop making excuses, take personal responsibility, stick to my preliminary plan and make changes when needed I will be able to succeed in college and anything else I set my mind to.

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