It's hard to expect him (looking at the child growing up, and the kid in college less than the adult) to know how to balance work and entertainment when he was never taught these things.
Discipline isn't something that you are born with, and if nobody is there to teach it to you then you have to teach it to yourself. It sounds to me like the author is beginning to learn his lessons, but that doesn't change the failures of his childhood parents/mentors who clearly did not adequately prepare him for college.
One of the reasons that I like college as an institution though is that it is a 'safe' place for you to learn the gaps in your childhood education. It's more or less a safe haven for you to finally be on your own but with still lessened consequences.
When you always have a group of people supporting you (like your parents), it's difficult to realize that you lack discipline, and it's difficult to realize the full consequences of your laziness.
I reject the notion that a child needs to have great parents in order to recognize basic cause and effect.
In my opinion, we need to stop perpetuating this idea that children are some kind of tabula rasa that must be filled with knowledge from their parents, as if to say that children are incapable of figuring things out for themselves. This thought process is what the excuse makers in life thrive on.
Discipline isn't something that you are born with, and if nobody is there to teach it to you then you have to teach it to yourself. It sounds to me like the author is beginning to learn his lessons, but that doesn't change the failures of his childhood parents/mentors who clearly did not adequately prepare him for college.
One of the reasons that I like college as an institution though is that it is a 'safe' place for you to learn the gaps in your childhood education. It's more or less a safe haven for you to finally be on your own but with still lessened consequences.
When you always have a group of people supporting you (like your parents), it's difficult to realize that you lack discipline, and it's difficult to realize the full consequences of your laziness.