#3 “Loopholes: Key to Learning”

Social stratification made the Philippine government twirl – people on top are the main priority and people at the bottom will wait ‘til an ounce of care will be dropped down by our own made majesty.

Like a thief in the night, death knocks in the door in some parts of Iligan and Cagayan De Oro when Typhoon Sendong brought heavy rains causing flush mud flood carrying logs that killed nearly a thousand residents.  A disastrous event that made their lives stop, taking everything they have and leaving them nothing but a bit of hope and courage to stand and face the reality again.

The death toll of the Typhoon Sendong is beyond one could assess, more than one expected and the damage is far from what is broadcasted. With the facts that is laid by the Sendong aftermath, inefficient government, less-concerned citizens and passive attitude of every individual explains it all.

I could even recall a statement from a victim that goes like this “Blaming the government for its turtle-like response to this should not be taken against us for they could never understand us because they did not experience what we had hurdled through just to survive in the first place”, dismay and anger is written in her face.

In the midst of distress and sufferings brought typhoon Sendong , victims would consider  a smile from a country leader as a crime, an act of irresponsibility and negligence to the immediate need of the affected citizenry. A renowned father of the country attending a party instead of taking the lead for the immediate action to the victims would be no good for the public. The responsibilities laid on the shoulder of our President is not an excuse for tolerating this, putting first things first is a must for a public servant and a leader. Of all the disasters we’ve gone through, we did not learn still, history repeats itself as you may see. The system in our country regarding disasters is already programmed just similar as before. The same in the sense that it is ineffective, passive and could never define the true essence of security for the majority.

Bearing the fact that CDO and Iligan City is far from the heart city of the country and making it as a possible reason for response delay is an implication of superiority of the north over us in the south; a geographical discrimination that is very degrading to the Mindanawans.  Aquino’s administration is not far from the administrations that passed, there’s nothing new but just merely a revised edition of inefficient government system.

Human irresponsibility is also a big say to this issue. The logs that killed numerous lives portray less concern to our natural environment. Business always preoccupies us yet we did look forward to the reality that if nature takes revenge all we have will turn to nothing.

Lack of information dissemination regarding Sendong is the scheme of the crowd but the question is, are they willing to evacuate as it will be instructed to?  Would they believe in the warning? Partly would say yes but majority it will not come out that way. With this each of us must take the lesson seriously. Let us not wait for another typhoon to come for us to work on. Be prepared always and hand in hand let’s nurse Mother Earth back to health.

Loopholes are clearly seen in the Typhoon Sendong now, may this disaster became a motivation to each individual to take and do our individual part and we must keep a eye in our government, by that we make sense as a citizen.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                   By: Lynrose Jane Genon and Jhora Samm Genon

#2 What Sendong Calls For?

Thousands of lives were lost, millions of belongings were gone and it seems that the world of Iliganons stopped when Sendong came. “This is just a nightmare, slap me and bring me back to reality”, I wish that incident was as simple as this but I’m afraid it’s not. It was more disastrous compared to the war we experienced in our hometown. It was as tragic as a lion devouring a puppy or a spider washed away by the rain. Taking a glimpse of what had happened; I came into a reflection point where I tend to ask myself what was Sendong for? For me, Sendong is a call for change, unity and submission.

Sendong calls each of us to change for the better. There’s a need for changing our ways of living, to set aside our earthly priorities and to put caring for nature a top of everything. Letting go of the things we valued the most where we invested our money and time is very hard but Sendong taught us a lesson that material things can’t save us. It showed to us that in a wink of an eye we can lose everything we have if we continue to be deaf for this call. Let’s plant trees again, stop illegal logging, and be responsible of our wastes. Doing these simple things for the Earth would not starve us but it will surely keep us away from danger. Sendong wants us to be aware of our mistake and to learn from it. It challenged us stand up after the pain and be more responsible so that the pain won’t happen again.

Battling in this competitive world occupies most of the individual’s minds now a day. Meeting the deadlines for work, school and business eats our daily time and it scattered us all into different paths individually. This is Sendong wants to mend. It calls us to be united again in the name of community service and environmental works. It reminded us that we belong in a society and we cannot live alone. The loss of our neighbors is our loss too, helping one another is the best thing that we should do. Blaming one another would do us no good but instead we must join our hands together in moving on in our lives. To be one for nature is the solution of this problem, taking each of our individual responsibilities would eventually keep us away from destruction if another Sendong might come again.

It is sad to reflect on the reality that many lives were lost but looking it positively, it is part of our painful sharpening to become better and responsible individuals. Sendong calls us to submission to God. We alienate ourselves to Him for quite a long time. This is the time for us to repent and led ourselves back to Him. God doesn’t want to punish us but He probably made that to awaken each of us and remind us that we belong to Him not to the world. Prayers can move mountains and can even stop the storm and hold the flood, with God in our lives we will be safe and faith can make everything possible. Sendong serves as a light to some who were wandering in the wilderness back to God.

A month had passed, this is to remind us that the days of the world continue to roll, we must move on. Let us put in us what Sendong calls for. It happened for us to change, be united and we must submit ourselves to God. Taking Sendong’s challenge through nursing Mother Earth back to health in our priority list is the best way we can do to be safe in our Earth.

#1 A Tool of Appreciating Life

Each student is  inclined to a certain academic discipline where the individual's interests are catered. Everyone aims to expand their knowledge in the specific area of study they chose whether it may be Humanities, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Sciences etc. and as part of reaching this aim disciplinary writing was brought into the table to widen the scope of knowledge in each discipline through research works.

But what is Writing in the discipline anyway ? Is it a writing activity where you are timed, given with a checklist what to do? Would somebody spank, slap or give us a disciplinary action whenever we we write the wrong thing or in we write in a wrong way? Or putting those two together?

Definitely no, writing in the discipline is still a good avenue for us who put our heart on writing to pen down what we know and discovered but in a more objective, concise and substance-focused manner. 


Writing in the discipline is with no difference in other academic writing outputs in structure. It follows a step by step writing process with accordance to the writing rules and guidelines. It is an organized formal writing where critical thinking, proper use of language, parallelism, coherence are applied like any writing activity. The characteristic which made writing in the discipline different form others is it focuses on a certain area of study. For example in our discipline as English majors we are opt to produce outputs in accord with our field. It is merely about linguistics, literature and its application to human life in a broader sense.This would give us a grasp of the field we are starting to engage with.

Writing in the discipline may be restricted in many ways in the sense that you would present a well-examined information  not an opinionated one. Thus, it would hinder us to fully express our own thoughts on it but advantageously it would open our minds to a more rational way of thinking and assessing things.

Written outputs of  writing in the discipline differs depending on the discipline we are into.Individuals who are into Business field would write about how Online Publishing improves market sales while we English majors may write about Online Publishing's impact to printed journalism. Bearing the fact that disciplines are inter-related to each other,  writing in the discipline could have the same founding topic but it varies gradually as it stretches out to life's application.

Since academic disciplines are highly structured and readily available to researchers ,writing in the discipline introduces us to the world of research and it places us to an arena where we can engage with the latest trends and discoveries in the field of research.

Sometimes I think that disciplinary writing may be considered an activity that will imprisoned us to a smaller scope of  learning but later i realized it gives us an opportunity to widen our knowledge and understanding in a narrowed area of study so that we can have a greater control on that field and we could use that as an effective tool in addressing the problems concerning our discipline.

For me, as English major writing in the discipline is making use of writing skills in improving our discipline and opening more doors of knowledge that will make us appreciate more the essence of our discipline in the society and in our day to day living.

It's not Yet Too Late

Technology became indispensable part of human existence now a days, you can see technology everywhere. When i was a high school student, I tried to keep updated of the useful trends. I did expose myself to social networking . Cellphone became my best friend. Surfing in the internet became a must for me especially with regards to my studies. I have the feeling that although I don't have the financial capacity to provide myself with the latest hi-technological devices, I still had the chance to learn how to use it beneficially to me. This boost my self-esteem in some ways and gives me an assurance that by all means I still have the ability to survive in this world of technology. At that point, that was enough for me.

As I reached college, I realized that I am not really up into technology as what i have thought before. Our teachers introduced online stuffs that I never encountered in my high school life. We never experienced blogging, learning in an online environment like MOLE, having quizzes online etc. At first, I was amazed and a bit curios on how to do that for it seems advantageous to our part. It would surely be fun and exciting.

With that realization in mind, I felt blessed to have the chance to be able to grapple this methods of learning in my student life. Although it was a bit late to know about this but at least i had the chance to know this and eventually learn more by this and be more prepared as I will graduate in college. 

Many students will consider doing this stuffs as waste of time or such but for me it is one of the best opportunities of students to grab where you can learn more and be able to connect with the rest of the world.

Indeed, this is a challenge for me to cope with this as a first timer in these stuffs but I know i can do this. I am thankful to our mentors for giving us another avenue to learn where more doors of opportunities awaits us. This may be late to get into this but it's not yet to late to cope up with others.