"Sorry man, I can't make it"

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

-- Paul Theroux

This seems to be a widespread notion in the college scene. Promises don't really hold much weight, asking people for favors and them following through is a rarity at best. One thing I've come to realize at the college level is that if you want anything done right, you've got to do it yourself.

Whether its because you need them to bring a book to study, a ride home on the weekend, or someone's help with a student organization event, you can never fully expect someone to show up, without constant pandering and three or four phone calls.

I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else, last minute phone calls that say I can't make it, but that doesn't make this scathing critique any less valid.

With few exceptions, being able to depend on someone is something that I wouldn't highly recommend. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I'd definitely like to figure it out. Maybe its because they're not used to it.

I can understand that this is college, a transitionary period in our lives, where we're learning to embrace the professional world. I would definitely consider being reliable as a professional characteristic, or I guess more appropriately, being unreliable makes you come off as unprofessional. Regardless, if college was truly a transitionary period of becoming professionals, wouldn't we at least get it right some of the time?

What I mean by that is if someone is repeatedly shown to miss appointments and things of that nature, how do you make them learn? Talking to them doesn't do any good, since they'll just point out the few times when they did manage to be punctual and proper. The old homage "You can lead a horse to water" comes to mind.

Or maybe in the end it goes back to the original quote. Maybe they're all secretly aware that as long as they keep proving themselves to be unreliable, people'll stop asking them to be useful. But is that really what they want? After all, who among us really doesn't want anyone to lean on them, to be truly independent of their peers, and to be on the outside looking in? Or maybe we're all just a little too lazy. Yeah, I'm pretty sure thats it.