Thoughts on Personal Responsibility for Ms. Thompson

I’m a big advocate of taking personal responsibility for the things that go wrong in your life. Usually, what you achieve and what you fail to achieve is directly related to how much effort you’ve put into a given endeavor. I know there are always circumstances beyond one’s control, but the key to leading a successful life is to dodge those unforeseen obstacles and to find a creative way either to work around them, or to turn them into opportunities.

This is a lesson that one Trina Thompson has failed to learn.

Who is Trina Thompson, you ask? She’s the woman who’s sued her college for the $70,000 she spent on tuition because her new bachelor’s degree in information technology hasn’t yet landed her a job.

Well, Trina, I have a news flash for you. If you can’t find a job, maybe the problem has more to do with you than with your college education. Perhaps that thought hasn’t entered your mind, but it should. You see, judging by the steps you’ve taken to foist the blame for your lack of achievement on your college, I can deduce that you need to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. And if you look closely, I suspect you’ll see a veil of victimhood shrouding you like a brilliant aura.

Now I don’t mean to get too personal, Ms. Thompson, as I only know you via your absurd lawsuit, but what I can say to you is this. Nobody is guaranteed a job in this world. I am quite certain your college’s career center didn’t guarantee you employment just because you managed to pass the school’s course work. There are plenty of people out there with similar degrees that are under employed in this tough economic environment.

The difference between you and the majority of under-employed Americans is that they aren’t going to the legal system to redress their grievances. Rather, I suspect that many professionals out there who have been laid off or downsized are trying to either learn new skills that can make them competitive, or they are waiting patiently until the job market begins to improve.

If I may be so bold, let me just say that rather than taking your college to court, you’d be much better off undertaking a concerted effort to make yourself a more valuable asset to employers. As an employer I know first hand that good help is hard to find, and when you do find good people, you cherish them.

If you do this, you just might find out how good it feels not to be a victim.