Part of growing up is learning how to bite your tongue, even if it means drawing blood.

I am as hot headed as they come; when people are disrespectful I want to push them into the hole they have dug for themselves, but sometimes you just have to walk away from the matter to collect your steamrolled thoughts.

My brain tends to produce comebacks that will cut deeply, but fortunately I graduated high school three years ago where these comments might have been justified and warranted.

Even so, these words are still mean and at the end of the day, unnecessary. The more you keep your initial thoughts between your ears, the more you can work on forming the harsh words into constructive criticisms.

The words on this page were provoked as I witnessed entitlement from several people I am surrounded by. Of course, this is not the first time I have seen this.

Although it is important to get help sometimes, we cannot expect to have our hands held forever.

If that were the case I would still need my mother to cross the street.

The sooner we let go, the sooner we can be hands-on learners, because application and experience allows us to strengthen our skills.

Even though I am in college, it seems that some people still have not transitioned from their parents and educators laying out the foundation for life.

My theory is that this foundation builds that sense of entitlement that causes people to expect coddling and for everything to be spelled out for them.

For the most part, this is a problem for that group, but it can easily interfere with others learning and maintaining a mutual respect for our fellow human.

Demanding life to be made easier only makes it much harder; some time down the road you are going to realize life is hard and unfair.

Disrespecting others with these demands will not result in answers on a silver platter, but instead another instance of setting yourself up for failure in the future.

Professionalism and independence is a hard but important lesson to learn.

This does not necessarily mean lowering your expectations of life and others; we should still hold everything to a standard, but we should be fair and respectful in doing so.

Life is still going to have pitfalls whether we prolong getting around them or not, so continue to ask questions, think about how our actions affect others, and do not expect everyone else to do the work for you.

Let us keep our expectations high and our egos low; you can do well without an obvious sense of entitlement.

Abbey Whittington is a junior journalism major and can be reached at 581-2812 or anwhittington@eiu.edu.