Our Voice

    Far to often, incoming freshmen think that getting out from under mommy’s and daddy’s thumb and changing zip codes makes them adults.
    They would be wrong.
    There is quit a bit more to being an adult than not living with your parents. Chief among them is taking responsibility for your actions.
    This, of course, cannot happen until students realize their actions have consequences. Many students see college as a transitioning post, a place to learn how to grow up. What they do not understand is that the impressions they make here could greatly impact their futures.
    Most people are not dumb enough to unashamedly disobey teachers and ruin recommendation letter opportunities. Instead they wreck relationships with their peers, burning bridges to valuable resources for the future.
    This often does often not occur with blatant fights and arguments, but instead transpires with the simplest of everyday activities.   
    Every time a student floats through a group project, making others take up the slack, they show how unreliable they can be to a potential future employer.
    When students throw a party and fail to heed to a neighbor’s request to tone it down, another bridge is burned.
  A few years ago, when I was a sophomore, I moved in with a new roommate named Kyle. We had never met before. We had very little in common. My major was history while his was English. I stayed up late; he was in bed by 11 p.m.
    We could have ended up hating each other. We could have behaved like children and gone at each other’s throats. Instead, we acted like adults and worked around the problems. We were not friends, but did not dislike each other either. 
    In the end, I moved out to be closer to my girlfriend at the time, while my roommate transferred schools to be closer to home. Very little chance we would ever see each other again, right?
    Wrong.
    He came back a year later. We both became Mass Communication majors.  Kyle now works for me as the Features Editor.
    Taking responsibility for his actions helped Kyle earn a job and a stepping-stone to a career.  
    Student’s actions will have consequences. What those consequences are is up to them. 

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 19 2007. Filed under Opinion, Our Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry