Rockridge High School
Taylor Ridge, Illinois
Teacher: Barbara Downey
Personal Responsibility
By Blake Anderson
Grade 12
As communities grow older and become more developed, people feel exempt from improving the
quality of life in their community. As a result, community life struggles to become
better, but there are those who wish to improve and those who wish to try. For those
few people who are brave enough to stand up to the harshness of reality, they will be
commended, and their town will prevail.
As a community, we wonder what we can do to make solving problems better. People
know what is wrong but do not know what to do. Underage drinking is one problem that
ties into every community. We all know that teens drink to be “cool” or to
be “in”, but what is stopping them? Police officers usually can not see
the problem until it is too late, resulting in devastating effects. Teens perish,
and their faces are remembered as just a drunk who killed someone.
To protect our teens and future teens, police and parents need to be
more aware of what their child is doing. Also, school policies are getting more
lax. Every day I see underage students smoking outside the school hidden from
view. Sometimes I see students using chewing tobacco to, once again, be
“cool” upon the school premises. The only reason we do not see these acts
is because we do not look for them as much. School employees may see these acts and
not care, but that is the problem, not caring. In some teens lives, drugs are as
important as eating and sleeping. Officials know they are capable to commit these
offenses, but seem to overlook these teens. We need to catch teens in the act, to
look for them so we can cut the drug problem at the root.
As I stated before, the community needs to keep drunk teens off the road. You may ask,
“Well, why not grown-ups?” Adults have made their choices in life and what
they want to do with it, they will do it. Teens, on the other hand, can learn early
about the mistakes, to save them the pain and agony later on in their adult life.
Speed limits, though, can be enforced on everyone. I have seen people go 150 mph on
highways and 80 mph through some towns. This, specifically, can cause more accidents
than in most drunk driving cases. I guess I do not comprehend why going this fast
means so much to some speeders. Yeah, you might get somewhere faster, but I will get
there safer. I do not think that cops enforce speed limits too much. If we
made cars so they only went 80 mph, no one could speed excessively.
There are those of us who do need mentoring, however, to stop these problems. No, I
am not talking about AA meetings, just somebody to look up to or someone who you want to
be like, a role model. It may be your parents or a famous figure head of society,
but whomever it is, I guarantee you will want to become that person. Maybe you do
not want to be exactly like your mentor, but instill some of their best qualities into
yourself. When we hear the word “counseling”, we think of a shrink or a
doctor, but in some ways it may help to be counseled.
The only person that makes this decision can be you. You have to ask yourself,
“Do I want to become better?” or “Am I really in need of help?” If you
let it pass, you may endanger yourself and your fellow peers. Maybe you just need
someone to associate yourself with in your community. It could be a close family
friend, or it could just be one of your friends. Your friends know you and what you
are like and may have noticed your problem, but let it pass. If you ask, they may be
more willing to help you.
For those people who stand up and face problems in their community, they can only better
the standards of living and growing in their community. For those who fail to see
the problems, they will only suffer more for not knowing. We, as a community, need
to become strong and face our problems head-on. We will become closely tied as a
family instead of a community, one person looking out for the next.
Personal Responsibility Essay Questions
1. In the U.S. we invest in time and effort for our happiness. We
also get to choose our own partners. In Manus, people invest in objects and
base that on their marriages.
2. Most of the people that I interviewed said that the most
important thing in a relationship is how you value commitment. Others said that
trust and talking over problems is equally important.
3. People need to straighten up their lives to make their own
lives happier.
4. The idea behind this is that we need to clean up local roadways and
work together for safer streets.
5. People need everything or else they will drop out of
society completely. Future generations will be based around more material objects.
6. The passage states that people create a forum of public
responsibility and accountability that would not happen in an uncontrollable democracy.
7. I prefer regulations because regulations are just easy
directions that we follow. An alternate way may to do these things in different
ways.
8. If babyboomers retire, more jobs would be open to upcoming
generations that have new ideas and concepts.
9. Poverty will always remain in the U.S. and
1) Somebody will alwaysbe poor
2) 2) The unemployment rate is too high
3) 3)
Poverty still remains the same as it was awhile back.
10. The three objectives that are the most important are :
religion, reaching your collective goal, and to always be determined.