Working with college students is my life’s passion, but it is also the most frustrating, baffling, and emotionally taxing circumstance I have placed myself in. I live and work on a college campus and I am basically awake 24/7 because of the decision I made to pursue my passion, but also due to the choices that others are making.

I do love what I do, but it is quite a thankless job. I sit in the hospital with students that are not sober enough to remember me being there. I clean up bodily fluids. I get sworn at on a weekly basis. I am spoken badly about behind my back (and to my face). When it comes down to it, I care about each student, no matter what they think of me, but that does not mean that I can’t be frustrated time to time, because of the decisions that they are making. Now, what is this Residence Hall Director’s tangent all about? Well, a lot of what I deal with pertaining to students ends with students not taking responsibility and blaming me for their mistakes.

Being a higher education professional, I have done a lot of research and read a lot of books on the millennial generation. And I am one… so that basically makes me an expert, right? It has been embedded in the minds of students that they are special little snowflakes, more deserving than everyone else. Maybe my parents were more realistic, or maybe it is because we are on completely different ends of the generation, but something has got to change. All I ask is for a little more responsibility to be taken. Own up to your mistakes so that you can own your successes.

Anyone that knows me knows that I fall back on the wisdom and words of others, so if you are finding it difficult to take responsibly or need an extra dose of motivation, here are some quotes to lead you in the right direction.

1.

“One of the greatest challenges in creating a joyful, peaceful and abundant life is taking responsibility for what you do and how you do it. As long as you can blame someone else, be angry with someone else, point a finger at someone else, you are not taking responsibility for your life.”
—Iyanla Vanzant

2.

“When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness.”
—Eckhart Tolle

3.

“The victim mindset dilutes the human potential. By not accepting personal responsibility for our circumstances, we greatly reduce our power to change them.”
—Steve Maraboli

4.

“One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.”
—Martin Seligman

5.

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
—Voltaire

6.

“If a person doesn’t want to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, they may try to blame others. Don’t accept blame or try to fix things for them when you’ve done nothing wrong. They need to learn that if they want different outcomes, they will have to make different choices.”
—Doe Zantamata

7.

“You can’t change someone who doesn’t see an issue in their actions.”
—Author Unknown

8.

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
—Theodore Roosevelt

9.

“You are responsible for your life. You can’t keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on.”
—Oprah Winfrey

10.

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstance, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.”
—Jim Rohn

11.

“Part of getting a second chance is taking responsibility for what you did wrong in the first place.”
—Jack Bauer

12.

“It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself and no one else has made it.”
—Sophocles

13.

“Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
—Viktor E. Frankl

14.

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will—his personal responsibility.”
—Albert Einstein

15.

“You are always responsible for how you act, no matter how you feel.”
—Robert Tew

16.

“It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.”
—Moliere

17.

“When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.”
—Dalai Lama