MOVING FOR A BETTER STATUS
JACKLYN EUNICE N. LABUNG
As a social human being, I have also grown to embrace the changes brought about by technology. From writing letters, I have moved to creating accounts on social networking sites to connect to my relatives and friends abroad. I have learned to love the art of photo- and experience-sharing over the internet, and have realized that one must not overly share information and details about their story. I appreciate the idea that my facebook, twitter and instagram accounts connect and reconnect me to people that I care about; as much as I care about them.
What I do not understand and I have yet to know, is why my students get addicted to posting updates and sending friend invites to the point that they forget that they have assignments to do and projects to submit. What I can’t figure out is the reason why they prefer to spend time thinking about their status (or if they even think about it) instead of researching for their school works. How is it possible that there are students who like to go to internet shops and spend a ratio of their baon to send a facebook message to classmates whom they see every single day, five days a week. Or to people they can’t even talk to when they meet at corridors. What I mean is this: they can talk to their friends at school. They can stop being awkward towards people by not posting anything on each other’s walls that they can’t personally express. I don’t want to think that maybe I am just too old to try to decode their likes and fit in to their age bracket; and that the reason why I probably would not understand what they do is because I don’t really belong to their generation – just as they say. What I am trying to say is that we should be more responsible with our actions and decisions. Students should be students first and dream to be better individuals, before they become facebook famous and achieve worth-following twitter status. All of us should dream big and do something to realize it.
In reality, we need to be serious about our studies and our dreams for our future. As much as socializing is important, it is also a given fact that we should grow intellectually in order to reach the most promising potential of our individuality. As social beings, we cannot be stopped from connecting and reconnecting to people around us; as much as we cannot cease our burning desire to learn and improve our lives. May social networking sites bring us closer to our dreams and not slow down our escalation in our life.
Let us start changing our status by moving to change our lives for the better.
The author is Teacher — oOo— I at Gatiawin Elementary School