This is a guest post written by an 18-year old.

Recently, I have come in contact with more people than I ever imagined. I moved to a new city (The Big Apple), and also started college there.

You’re probably thinking, wow that’s a lot of people..and germs. Well, maybe not exactly that, but something like it. In meeting so many people you see similarities and differences in personality, accents, and most of all, you notice the personal choices that people make.

Almost everything you do is a personal choice, wether you are conscious of it or not.

With that in mind, the more people I meet the more common I see this personal choice being made without any thought about the ramifications:  doing something wrong and perceiving it as acceptable and normal.

Another favorite:  doing something wrong and then blaming someone else for your actions so you don’t look bad.  Sounds a little drastic, right? Wrong.

I had a minor catastrophe this weekend. My Roomate – young attractive, and living in New York City, etc., decided at some point while we were walking as a group, to turn around and go for a walk without telling us. We turned around and saw that she’d disappeared, and of course, we immediately began to think horrible thoughts about what has happened to her.

She didn’t answer any of our calls or texts – we called tons of times.  I even called my parents for advice on what to do (mind you it was early evening when this happened).

We alerted the school security at our dorms, and all of our friends. My roomate’s father is retired NYPD. He gave her a number for the  head of the precinct in our area and told us to ask if he could keep an eye out for our lost friend.

Everyone was stressing. Girls across the hall (that we don’t even really know) were putting on hats and shoes to prepare to go out look for her because they were worried even though she wasn’t their friend.  It was after midnight by that point.

Then just as we were all getting ready to walk out of the door to go look again, our roommate, that we’d declared MIA, walked into the room like nothing had happened.

She asked us why so many people were in our room so late.  She had the audacity to say that we never called, noticed or even cared that she was gone.

I hope you have a baffled look on your face.

It was midterm week and not one of  us got a chance to study because we were too busy looking for her. She wrote us a nine page “apology” of anything but apologies – it was more of a blame game than anything else.

Freeze.

Is that acceptable behavior?

Consider these next examples:  

During midterms, a student chose to bash our teacher to the test administrator, claiming that the instructor hadn’t taught us any of the material on the test and that’s why she’s going to do badly. Every other day she said he was an incredible teacher, except for test day.

Acceptable?

A man in a manual wheelchair struggled up a long ramp inside a drug store with all of his items. A woman behind him became so aggravated with how much trouble he was having, and how much time he was taking, that she sighed with annoyance, went back down the ramp and up the stairs as the man continued to struggle on the ramp.

Acceptable?

A man on a bicycle got hit by a car in the middle of an intersection. He was fine, but still lying on the ground with the bike between his legs. People were honking and yelling for him to get out of the way.

Okay, wait, what? Is this what the world has come to?

We are supposed to be growing better every day, but with the things I’m seeingm it makes me wonder if people have morals, anymore.

When did it become the better choice to be rotten, instead of  being a genuinely good person?

It doesn’t seem like that should even be a question, but in fact I think it’s more important now than ever.

I’d love to hear what you think about this.  Let me know.