Personal Responsibility
Jeffery Noland
Foundations for General Education and Profession Success / GEN-200
2/4/2013

Abstract
This paper discusses the importance of personal responsibility and how it will help your academic and/or professional career. Knowing your ethical standpoint is essential to taking personal responsibility. This paper shows my personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to my college/professional success and my ethical viewpoints.

Personal Responsibility
Everyone wants to be successful in whatever they choose to do. But, there are important steps to be taken to achieve any goal made. Personal responsibility is extremely important to have when trying to accomplish any type of success. Ethical standards will be tested, and knowing your responsibility is key. You cannot improve yourself and your life without taking responsibility for your actions.
Definition of Personal Responsibility
Personal responsibility is being able to acknowledge what is expected of you, and to do anything in your power to reach your goals. Whether you are dealing with work, school, or even day-to-day life, there are standards you are expected to meet. Before trying to meet the expectations, you must first find out what they are. It’s very important to be informed before accomplishing your goals.
Once you know the steps to take, it is also important to take responsibility for your mistakes. There will always be plenty of excuses and outside forces you don’t think you can control to blame your downfalls on. Though things happen that you can’t always control, being personally responsible will allow you to accept the difficulties, and find ways to work through them. Once you start blaming others or hard circumstances for your own failures, you stop taking responsibility for your actions. Success is all about realizing what it takes to get there, and doing everything in your power to work around the obstacles that may land in your way.
Personal Ethics Personal ethics are important to every aspect of life, whether personal or professional. It is important to know your own personal ethics before you are put into situations that will test them. It is also important to find your ethical strengths and weaknesses, and how your ethical outlook will help you make important decisions in the future. Personal ethics are formed over time. My personal ethics were molded by my upbringing, but life experiences have reinforced them over time. Everyone has different ethical habits and viewpoints. According to the Ethical Lens Inventory (2012), I tend to listen to my intuition to determine what character traits will best serve the situation. No matter what type of ethical position you have, there are always pros and cons.
Strengths & Weaknesses My biggest weakness, or my blind spot, is my unrealistic role expectations. I tend to rely too much on virtues that are associated with a specific role that I develop unrealistic role expectations (Ethics Game, 2012). Another weakness of mine is believing I am allowed special privileges because I haven’t assessed myself or the situation (Ethics Game, 2012). This is something I definitely need to work on because it makes a situation seem perfect until it suddenly isn’t. Another weakness of mine is going into decision-making without thinking things through. It’s important to study the specifics of the situation and analyze all possible outcomes (Putnam, 2002). I tend to listen to my gut without planning and being mindful before hand. Though it is good to listen to your inner ethical standards that you have made over the years, every situation is different and needs reflection and extra thought.
My biggest strength is compassion. I care about the community as a whole and about each individual member. I look into each situation and decide what would be best for each one instead of applying the same method to every situation. I feel that this is important because every situation