Gabrielle Aine R. CabanaENGLISH VIMr. Eddie L. DemalgenVI-1 PhilippinesEnglish TeacherUSING FACEBOOK: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGESThese days, social networking is on the rise. The biggest in the virtual world today is Facebook, as it acts a bridge between users. Users has the chance to update whenever they want or to search for daily education, relationship and business information. Here in the Philippines, almost all of the people including media men, famous people like artists, officials, teenagers, and even students as young as ten years old already have their personal account. Students try to make the group pages look like a school support system so they can have an account. We made Facebook a very important part of our lives. Yes, although it may or can help us in many ways but it can also harm us in other ways. On this note, let me site some advantages and disadvantages of using FACEBOOK (FB), especially for us students.What can be considered good about Facebook? Well, it gives us students supplementary knowledge. To start with, FB is an application that helps everyone to connect with people---people they were looking for and with different people from anywhere in the world. FB too, somehow improves our knowledge about places, customs and cultures other than ours. It (FB) can support learning too. For instance, students not so fluent in English can improve their Grammar by chatting with people from other countries. It is in this process that a student learns English indirectly. In addition, FB can also give students the chance to communicate with friends very easily. And, it can be used for group study by creating a group page dedicated for assignments, projects and teachers' reminders. FB also has its disadvantages. It can bring about bad effects to people, especially to students. As students wait for class updates, they are also subjected to enjoying status updates of friends and acquaintances; therefore, they are more often than not subjected to reading FB updates than reading books. FB users, tend to always want to know about status updates every day without them realizing it that it takes most of their time. There, they become nosy of other people's business and will be inspired to write unimportant things. Then they become misunderstood. People who give in to broadcasting dirty laundry such as problems with relationships at home, work or school loses credibility. Students become distracted, ignoring valuable time to do homework or study for their exams. Instead of browsing for research, they get stuck in chatting with friends, sometimes paying for high internet costs. And last but not the least is, sometimes, Facebook becomes a gateway for questionable characters to get into one's life. Accepting friend requests carelessly can cause this to happen, so be cautious.In totality, these are some of the advantages and disadvantages by having a Facebook account. It is quite okay if people think that Facebook is a fantastic social networking tool because it strengthens communication and bond of friendships; we can meet new people, find long lost friends, update social events, and widen our knowledge. Reality check: It is not all that good as it seem. Because it can be addictive and difficult to stop people especially us students to visit Facebook as we should not use this application too often. Education is the most important thing, and that Facebook can disturb our concentration on our studies if we are not careful. It will be better if we become more responsible and use Facebook sparingly.

WHAT DOES GRADUATION MEAN TO ME?Here comes March. For many students, March of every year signals the end of school, for some of us it is the concluding month where there may be achievements or there will be disappointments. March is the month the graduating students like us march down the aisle in togas, valiantly looking ahead to opening a new chapter to our future ahead, as we close an episode in our lives. As we walk towards the stage, ready to accept our diplomas and whatever awards we may have accumulated through our last year in elementary...think of what all of these mean to us. Graduating is a fine word to link to all of our hard work with earnest prayers of achieving something (with the help of our families and teachers) worth being proud of as we finish our elementary years. Graduation sums up all our endeavors. Endeavors that are honest and hard-earned. If we try to look into the real meaning of graduation in relation to our real feeling about it, we would say What does graduation mean to me? If I am to define graduation in the sense of just defining it like Wikipedia does-- Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the ceremony where students become graduates--Will I be able to take it in? Are we really aware of what it really means to us? For some, graduation is the end of childish banters and carefree friendships; for most, it is a rewarding as well as a frightening moment where one does not know of what lies ahead of them in high school. But what does it really mean to me?The moment I got accepted into 6th grade, all became clearer to me--that this will be my last year in elementary and that I will soon graduate. But before that, what have I learned? One, I learned respect. "treat others as you would likethem totreat you". Because no matter where one go in life, respect can come a long way; without respecting others, one is bound to receive no respect from others. Then, I learned the accomplishments hard work can bring to a person. Yes, one can cheat on tests or assignments as many times as one would like, but that person would never learn anything in the end. And as a result, one will never be able to use the knowledge from the person one copied from and use that in real life! Lastly, I discovered that in order to produce a good piece of good work, it takes time and patience. One example comes from writinga research essay.If an one delays until the night before the essay is due, a monstrous amount of stress and not creative ideas will contribute to the overall effect of the essay. Teachers that have taught for years may easily detect a piece of hard work over a piece of careless work, so it is best to start early rather than leave it for later! These real life examples gives me a basic foundation of what to expect from right after graduation. And realizing these makes graduation more rewarding--- I have learned something from my years in elementary.Summing up, graduation is not only an event where one reaps awards or recognitions but is a turning point in life where an evolution from ignorance and stubbornness to self-awareness and adaptability has been realized. Graduation is realizing that we have accomplished much from our elementary life, and that we basically more than learned---but also became adaptable to what is right and what helps us the most in the right way.

"One may think graduating is the ticket to the good life. I think otherwise; it is my ticket to changing the world, to help my fellowmen get a good life!"~Gabrielle Aine R. Cabana