Personal Responibility

I am a teacher. I am not the kind of teacher most people think of. I work for the local transit company, teaching apprentices and mechanics how to be mechanics. My job title is Technical Instructor, but I'm a teacher. I took this job, because I'm a product of this job. I remember going through this program and learning so much. I wanted that knowledge.

At the time I was hired as an apprentice the company was hiring some good people that wanted to learn. I often said that in every apprentice class; a third would be good mechanics and would move up in the company (if they wanted to), a third would be OK mechanics ( they were either real smart, but lazy or not too sharp, but a great worker), and the last third wasn't worth a damn (it's a union job so you can't just get rid of them for being sorry). In recent years we have started hiring people who don't want to be a mechanic, they just want more money than they are making now. In a nutshell we have been hiring slackers, layabouts, and people who are as dumb as a bag of hammers (I apologize to the hammers for insulting them).

Because of the quality of students I've been teaching, I often hear excuses. They make excuses for everything; why they didn't study, why they didn't fix a bus correctly, why they weren't in the classroom on time. It is never their fault, it is always someone else's fault. Because of this attitude I often spend time that I should be teaching them how a bus works, trying to get them to understand personal responsibility (I might as well be banging my head on the wall).

I started running, hiking, and walking my dogs again. For the last two weeks I've sat on my butt making excuses; it's to hot out, I'm to tired today, I look good as a fat guy. After trying to get my students to take personal responsibility and stop making excuses for everything, I realized I was doing the same thing about exercising. So, I got off the couch and started running again (I've even increased my distance to 2 miles).

I can now say my students taught me something, even if they didn't learn it themselves.