Personal Responsibility Essay
Donald Upward
GEN/200
January 15, 2014
Dan Barbara, MAEd

Personal Responsibility Essay

Personal responsibility is the necessity and willingness to complete tasks in a timely manner, and it is essential to achieving success in college. The key to this is exercising careful control over one’s time, finances, and health. There are benefits to engaging in responsible behavior along with negative consequences for engaging in irresponsible behavior. Two areas of improvement as a college student are procrastination avoidance and time management. Staying well ahead of deadlines is one effective strategy to help manage time.
According to Hersh and Geary Schneider (2005), “Personal responsibility and social responsibility involve the moral obligation to both self and community, and both forms of responsibility rely upon such virtues as honesty, self-discipline, respect, loyalty, and compassion.” (p. 8) As far as the student experience is concerned, the three main factors of time, finances, and health govern personal responsibility. A deficiency of any of these will have a detrimental effect on the chances of success. If one does not put aside enough time or is constantly procrastinating, they will likely miss deadlines and consistently will turn in work that is lacking in refinement and detail. This can lead to the belief that just scraping by with barely adequate work is acceptable. Similarly, if one does not do what is necessary to stay healthy, they will lack the energy and alertness needed for college level work. Specifically the need for sleep is of prime importance. According to Lerner and Lerner (2007), “An adult typically requires between seven and nine hours of sleep per night.” (p. 639) One’s alertness and ability to concentrate become impaired if less than the minimum amount of sleep is obtained. Finally, if one does not meet financial obligations, admittance to the university will be revoked. Personal responsibility, as it relates to University of Phoenix can be defined as the necessity and motivation to complete pertinent individual tasks in a timely manner while also meeting the obligations of the learning team.
The benefits of responsible behavior and the consequences of irresponsible behavior can be viewed as two opposite ends of a scale. On one end, the benefits include turning in quality work on time, gaining a full understanding of the material being taught, and earning the respect of the instructor and fellow team members. The positive feelings created through achieving these benefits serve to motivate one to maintain the responsible behavior. On the other end of the scale, the consequences for being irresponsible can be assignments turned in late, work that is poorly composed, and the inability to comprehend adequately the subject matter. Ultimately, these consequences can result in a low grade or the necessity to withdraw from the course. Even worse, though, if a learning team is involved, that irresponsibility can adversely affect the other members. For example, a learning team assignment that is turned in late by one of the team members can put the other team members into the stressful situation of needing to complete their part of the assignment in a less than adequate amount of time.
Two areas for improvement as a college level student are avoidance of procrastination and time management. Procrastination should be avoided by any college student, but it is especially important for online students to avoid this negative behavior. According to Klingsieck et al (2012), “Given that the demands on self-regulation are higher in distance education settings than in traditional education settings, the issue of procrastination should be of even greater relevance in distance university settings.” When attending class online, the student has neither a physical location nor a set scheduled time in which to congregate with classmates. They need to choose the time from each day that they will dedicate to logging onto the school website and participating in class. They also need to maintain the motivation to complete assignments in a timely manner without the physical presence of an instructor and other classmates. To meet the unique demands of the online learning model, students should plan out their time well in advance. This will ensure that they have enough time in which to get assignments finished, and it will enable them to do work when they are most effective. For example, some people do better work in the morning than they do at night. As such, they can allot time for schoolwork early in the day.
It is beneficial to devise a specific plan to practice personal responsibility while enrolled in school. One such plan would be to stay well ahead of deadlines. The benefit here is two-fold. Getting work finished early provides the opportunity to get started with future projects or to make revisions to current assignments should they be necessary. It also provides the peace of mind that comes with knowing that they have progressed in the class and that one’s goal is that much closer.
To effectively stay ahead of deadlines, one must employ a time management strategy. According to Ellis (2011), “Without planning, we fall prey to simply digging in – engaging in frantic activity with uncertain results. Planning replaces this behavior with clearly defined outcomes and action steps.” By planning out each day, always being mindful that there are only 24 hours available, one can prioritize tasks and set aside the time necessary to get them done.
Personal responsibility can be looked at as the motivation to do what is needed to excel in college while taking full advantage of the benefits of learning. To accomplish this, one must exercise control of their time, health, and financial resources. Responsible behavior will yield desirable benefits while irresponsible behavior will bring about harmful consequences. Procrastination avoidance and time management are potential areas of improvement for any college student. One effective strategy to help manage time is to stay well ahead of deadlines.

References Page

Ellis, D. (2011). Becoming a Master Student (13th ed.).Cengage
Learning.

Hersh, R. H., and Geary Schneider, C. (2005, June). Fostering
Personal & Social Responsibility on College & University Campuses. Liberal Education, 6-13.

Klingsieck, K., Stefan Fries, S., Horz, C., Hofer, M. (2012,
November). Procrastination in a Distance University Setting. Distance Education, 33(3), 295-310.

Lerner, L. & Lerner, B. (2007) Sleep. World of Sports Science,
2, 639-641