Responsibilities

Erick Allas

Growing up, you learn that as you get older, you become more responsible for things in life. You need to go to school, pay bills, do good things, work hard for a better future, and do your best to live your life to its fullest.

Sometimes, we choose to exclude some of these values. Ignoring responsibilities greatly affects your life. When missing payments for bills, you will have to pay additional late fees, along with a drop in your credit score. By skipping class, you might lose credit for not being present, miss any assigned homework or lose a pop quiz grade.

Responsibilities are put upon us as a way to show that life takes a little more work than planned.

Think of life as a video game with endless possibilities for completion—you can name it whatever you want. For this example, we can call this game of life, “Soul”. The reason for this name is that life is about living the soul in our bodies to its full extent. Once you die in this game, however, you don’t get to restart, you die forever.

It’s a pretty hardcore game right? You want to be careful to do everything correctly to move yourself through the right path. Cause and effect is everywhere, and it plays a huge role in how your life is planned out. Should you make a left or right? Left could lead you to a resolution. Right could lead you to a new skill. Which will be more useful? That’s the scary part: you never know.

This game has no cheat codes or looks into the future, you have to live in its moment. There could be a situation given by someone. When given the choice to either play video games with your friends or do your homework, what does one choose? One path leads to joy, the other leads to knowledge and responsibility. Ignore the second choice and you’re left with a temporary joy that dwindles once the deadline for the homework comes around. You’ll get stressed.

How do we deal with the responsibilities life places upon us? It’s actually pretty simple. The answer is one that I recently discovered through a friend who utilizes it greatly. That answer is having time management.

In today’s fast-paced society, everyone gets caught up in the moment and always says they don’t have enough time. No time to hang out! No time to study! No time to live a life! To an extent, that is true. We, as humans, have a very limited time on this Earth.

Twenty-four hours sounds like a lot of time each day. Most people use six to eight of it for sleep, resulting in sixteen to eighteen hours. But remember that saying of quality over quantity? That’s what time management does; it takes the quantity of time you have and makes almost every minute or hour of your day quality time.

A good way of managing your time is to make a schedule. Include everything, from class time, extracurriculars, work, free time, family time, and anything else that is a fundamental part of your day. Know what you can be doing every second of every day.

It is not necessary to adhere by the schedule’s times, but you can use the schedule as a template to what the day or week will be like. Remember that nothing is ever set in stone, life is unpredictable. What you can do, however, is incorporate your work and class times into the schedule.

Put time to study. I would say that for however many credits a person has, one would need to put double the amount of time to study. For example, twelve credits can equate to twenty-four study hours. This means that you should do work around those hours but if you complete your work early, you can use that time to do other things.

It would also be great to put in the days that bills need to be paid on and to set reminders to pay them if you forget. This way, you never miss a payment for anything! After all that, you should have open slots for whatever activity you like to do.

Remember to make sure there is never a dull moment in your day. Live your days to the fullest! You can read a book, play a sport, watch a show, or do many other things that can make your days the way you want them! Just having a set schedule every day keeps you on a path that you can follow. Always keep pushing forward and never forget that your life has such great potential!