![The cross country team poses for the camera after finishing the district meet. The varsity boys, JV boys and JV girls all placed third and the varsity girls placed fourth. “Coach put in the right training for us for this season, so I think we will be peaking this week and the next couple of weeks,” varsity runner and junior Nathan Kukla said. “The chances of making it to state are very high, but we don’t settle for the lowest and there is always going to be that chance, so [we] race for the best.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Heidi-831-1200x900.jpg)
![Sucking in a breath of air, freshman Lily Pope competes in the 200 yard individual medley. On Oct. 25, the swim team competed in the AISD Swim Invitational. Overall, the girls team took second place and the boys team came in eleventh. “My favorite stroke is butterfly because I do the best in that stroke,” Pope said. “I feel like [butterfly] can test how [your ability] to convince yourself to keep going. The hardest part of swimming is convincing yourself to stay strong and keep pushing during a hard race [when] everything is tired.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/POPE-1200x804.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, Author Ehigbor Okosun, members of Page Turners, and other students reflect on the author's visit. “I thought the visit was great,” Senior Amia De Leon said. “It was interesting talking to her and [getting to know] her process and her thoughts and books in general. But I think the reason it went well [was that] people got to ask questions. I'm glad that she said so much in response to the questions and it wasn't just one and done. [The author’s responses] felt very articulate.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Sebastian-5-1200x800.jpg)
![Standing in front of the field at a freshman football game, cheerleader freshman Jacob Gaudreau along with teammate freshman Bella Gibson pose for a photo during halftime of game. “[Cheer has] definitely given me a much more outgoing personality,” Gaudreau said. “I used to be very introverted, so it's definitely made me more extroverted towards people.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ingrid-204-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding a wooden pizza toy, senior Taylor Peterson plays with small children in Bucaramanga, Colombia. During the summer, Peterson traveled to Colombia to help build an elementary school that only had two classrooms but five or six grades with one teacher. “We add[ed] two more classrooms,” Peterson said. “It’s kind of hard when you have two or three grades in one classroom and you only have one teacher. It’s very hard to actually get some beneficial learning. [The extra classrooms will give the students] a better quality of education because they’ll actually have a place specific for their learning.” Photo by Taylor Peterson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Taylor-P.png)
![Swinging with his arm extended, senior Nolan Park hits the ball smoothly over the net and to the opponent’s side. Park is one of four varsity tennis captains and helped the team win district championships. “Winning district champs was a pretty awesome feeling,” Park said. “We had lost to Liberty Hill a couple of weeks before, but when we played them [again], we came out and really took care of business. We took them out and it was just a really awesome night.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kassidy-419.jpg)
![Standing proud, varsity senior athletes Rafael Escobar, Griffin Jacobs, Jakob Martin, and juniors Jackson Springer and Jack Morris pose with their newly earned medals. The varsity team finished third out of 14 teams on Sept. 25. “The team's primary goal is to win the district championship,” head coach Cody Price said. "We're confident that with our action plan in place, we can accomplish this mission. [For the next tournament], our preparation involves assessing our strengths and weaknesses, celebrating milestones and creating individual development plans." Photo courtesy of Cody Price](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/golf.jpg)
Facebook is hard to ignore. It’s grown into one of the world’s most popular websites, with over 600 million users worldwide since its creation in 2004. According to PC World, if Facebook were its own nation, it would be one of the world’s most populated countries right behind China and India.
On TV commercials and in magazine ads, more and more of your favorite stores and restaurants now urge customers to “find us on Facebook!” or sign up for contests through the website. The benefits are obvious. Facebook not only connects people to friends, it also streams the latest news from favorite artists, TV shows, clothing brands and more on a daily basis right on the homepage. Its rising status has even earned it a feature film which hit theaters this fall. And it all began in a small Harvard dorm room.
The man who would eventually become a billionaire before age 25 had started Facebook as just a site for Harvard students to connect with fellow classmates. However, Mark Zuckerberg’s site soon expanded and students from other colleges began using it as well. Gradually it grew stronger in popularity outside of schools and now stands alongside Twitter and MySpace as leading contemporaries in social networking. This staggering site has affected Cedar Park students as well.
“I started using Facebook about three weeks ago because I needed to communicate with my peers about club information,” Lyndsey Teets, junior, said. “It was suggested to me by a lot of different people because I was hard to get ahold of.”
Many students use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and get updates about school and gossip.
“I think that it’s given people a quick way to spread information and helps get work out quicker,” Teets said.
With MySpace being the choice venue for aspiring musicians and artists because of its music-hosting ability, Facebook is more user-friendly with simpler formatting and less clutter. Personal info, photos and more are easy to find. What used to be the “Become a fan” button is now just the “Like” feature, so when users “Like” a band or an artist’s official Facebook page, they have subscribed to news updates about new albums, tour photos and more.
Statistically speaking, November 2007, when MySpace was nearing a definite decline, Facebook was rising in popularity. Students at Cedar Park are now more tech savvy than recent generations, and can chat, share funny photos, post interesting videos and share life’s moments with each other from across the city. The rise of the Internet in the 90s and technology’s rapid overnight revolution has made these things more accessible to kids than ever before. The average teen spends about three hours a day on the computer alone. With all of the world’s news, music, photos and blogs at their fingertips, it’s hard to imagine living without these luxuries.
Although Facebook is only one facet of technology and the internet’s global takeover, it’s a huge one. From a Harvard student’s website experiment to one of the biggest pop culture icons of this generation, it has transcended the typical social network and skyrocketed into popularity faster than any of its kind. Whether linking users from Cedar Park to Houston or New York to Tokyo, Facebook has proven itself to be one of the most remarkable sites for connecting with friends, revisiting family, getting the latest news and simply enjoying the things that life has to offer.
