A Lesson I Learned In College

It’s all on You. Life is your responsibility.

In School people keep telling you what to do.

Everyone tells you to just take the hardest classes, get the best grades, and you will “find out what you want” eventually.

They treat it as though it’s something you just stumble across and something that everybody finds.

But by the time you get to college, if you at least looked around a little bit, you will notice that that’s not true.

Almost no one knows what to do with their life and almost everyone just keeps dodging the responsibility.

They blame life, their circumstance, their past, their boss, their location, skills, parents and just about everything else.

They do all of this to brush the responsibility off of themselves.

Do not follow that path.

In college I tried to do everything just like everybody else.

I worked incredibly hard in high school, taking extra classes where I could and already had 3 Semesters worth of college credits before I even graduated.

I went above and beyond and did the same in college.

Taking the maximum amount of classes at the highest difficulty all so I could get ahead.

It took me 3 years in college before I began to think.

I was stressing out so much, doing so many things, blindly trusting everyone around me and I couldn’t have been unhappier with it all.

One night I became so frustrated with everything that I panicked, which almost ended in me killing myself because I could not bear the pain and fear of it all.

And for what?

For the life that everybody else lives?

For a life that was not my own?

For something that someone else told me to follow?

I despaired.

And what really made me think was that, when I tried to look for help, everyone told me it was my responsibility.

When things look good everybody wants to tell you what to do, but when they don’t they all turn away.

When you are happy they all want a piece of it but when you’re not they all step away.

And, they are right; it ultimately is your responsibility.

Whether or not you are happy, confident, successful and brimming with purpose is up to you and you alone!

At the end of it all, when you are on your death bed, there will be no one to take your place.

No one will die for you.

If you lived an unhappy life until then based on what someone else told you, it’s you who has to die with that on their conscious.

Do not let it get to that!

Take a deep breath and take responsibility for your life now.

If you do not feel happy now, then change what you do in the day to become happy.

If you do not feel like your life has any purpose now, then take the time to find out what it is you want.

And if you are not where you want to be right now in your life, then take the time to sit down, make a battle plan and take the actions that you need to to succeed.

This life is yours and it is your responsibility. Make it a good one!

Originally published at www.quora.com.