did you ever watch a baby being said you can see how completely we depend on others when we're very small a baby just can't do much of anything for himself of course as we grow older most of us begin to strike out for ourselves we begin to develop something called self reliant up and all we are restraints we aren't given enough freedom to develop se it's much easier to put your new snow suit on than wait for him to do it himself take care of your own pet if someone else will do it  by streiber with your legs it's if you can get dad to helps this is an easy way to get by it's the trouble is if you're not self reliant you never do any more than just a lot why do you bother me with something simple like it's something i'm painting your to decide you'll never get a head around here or anywhere else unless you're going to make some decisions of your own yes and that's what can happen when you don't learn self reliance mr carson are you trying to tell me that i'm not self reliant right alan i didn't say anything about you but i find it often helps to paint that picture for students like you who come to me complaining that they don't feel they're accomplishing much well dose of self reliance can do wonders for any one of us could use a bit more than we have all right education i think i understand these are the steps to self reliance rightism assume responsibility be informed know where you are going and make your own decisions i'm not sure i understand well let's first assume responsibility but do you suppose that the wow assume responsibility that means to take the blame for things that are my why don't you assume responsibility for figuring out those other steps me yeah i well that's a good idea assume responsibility to do things for yourself not a bad idea that what's the next thing on this card be informed well it's easy to see why you should be informed when claire you have to get facts and information in order to keep up you have to know where to get information to but why be informed about other things besides school work wow better get after the school work now lead jackson to take american literature and every sound after speech class but i don't know what i want to take where i hope you don't let your friends leave your around this way what will you get out of these questions what do you want to get out if you know what you want in life you know where you're going make your own decisions but in the world are you talking about oh well i sort of want to emerson i learned a lot from this essay when i was your age thanks dad i read that you may have to take american literature i think i mean no matter what course i think about those questions dad will give me a little time to think i now you may think that's the end of alland story actually it's only the beginning i would learn very quickly the meaning of the steps to self reliance but it takes quite a long while to make self reliance a habit i watched allen for several months i saw how he assumed responsibility for example he took a job on the student prom and worked at it seriously i saw how you kept  and he studied hard he read more than just the assignments he talked to people and listened to them he wanted to be informed and he never missed a chance to learn something i saw alan found where he was going he came to me sometimes for advice but he never asked me to decide for him he thought seriously about his goal this purpose i saw how we learned to make decisions for himself always on the basis of the best information he could get and then just the other day at another student from meeting i saw alan show how really self reliant he has become the students were quite upset about our parking situation around the school but no one was able to offer much of a solution that is until alan yes what is the problem with those who drive to school can't keep a lot of parking in the street i understand it's too narrow that's why we've been getting tickets there we'll just have to find another place for our cars and motorbikes i've been looking in that you know since we got the new tennis courts maybe the old ones just north of the school so they could easily be made into a parking space we can do  decisions alan learn to do it and they certainly are happy you're better person for it but you develop