What makes me Sarah Durston

What makes me me? well I think that I have been Influenced in a lot of ways, by my family, friends, programs I've been involved in but I think that I just am who I am.


I was born into a family of eight, so I have five siblings... and four older brothers. Most girls when I tell them this moan sympathetically and say "awwww you poor girl!" In the book, to kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee, Atticus says "you can choose your friends but you sure can't choose your family" this is true but I wouldn't trade my family for anything. I love my big brothers. The oldest one is twelve years older than me and the one next to me is two years older than I. They are gentlemen, for the most part, and look out for me. They've for sure shaped who I am today: they "toughen me up" as my brother Sam says (I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing) and help me understand guys better. I also have a younger sister and she has changed who I am in that she makes me more altruistic; less selfish because I constantly have to share my things and spend my time with her.


I was home schooled up until high school excluding grade three. Although I only had two school friends, (my sister and my brother), I did figure skating and made some good friends there, as well as at my church. Most of the friends that I made at these places are the same ones I have today, although I have met so many more awesome people at high school as well. My friends help me through my day and have helped me come out of my comfort zone. I used to be really shy and I think I sometimes come across that way, but If you asked someone who really knew me you would find out that I am quite the contrary.


When I was home schooled, really the only social life I had was at skating and my church. These places have helped me overcome my shyness. And my church has partly established what I believe in.


Yes these things have helped shape part of who I am, but really I just am just the girl God created me to be. Right now I'm a fifteen year old girl with evening blond hair and blue eyes, born in Winnipeg, half British, half German/Ukrainian. I live in a big red house out in the country with a family of eight, I'm a figure skater, and I can't stand fake cheese. I'm just Sarah Pauline Durston.

Pop culture and today's society

Pop culture is something the majority of teenage girls are obsessed with. In today's society, there are girls starving themselves of nutrition so they can't even function and some girls even die from it, just because they want to have the 'right figure'.

High school girls wake up at 5:00 Am just because they have to have their hair 'just so'. I think that girls especially have it hard. We see time and time again magazines and adds with the perfect body and we fool ourselves into thinking that we have to have it.

I knew a girl who was just a normal sweet little girl. She lived in a Christian home and believed in God. She started to get older and around the age of thirteen, she began buying expensive clothes, wearing makeup and spending a little more time on her hair, things that are perfectly fine, but she became obsessed with the way she looked.

Every time she went to the mall she would spend hundreds of dollars because she "didn't have any clothes that her friends hadn't seen yet." It got out of hand, she stopped caring about her family, turned away from God, and moved to Toronto, working as a makeup artist and doing things that no girl should ever do.

It is easy to be drawn into what the world tells us we have to be, perfect in figure, perfect hair, perfect skin.

Nobody is perfect.

I think that we shouldn't be so concerned with the what the celebrities are wearing, doing or driving. They are just people trapped in a world where they can't just take a day off at the beach, go shopping at the mall with a couple friends without being suffocated with people they don't even know stretching our their hands to touch them or snap a shot. I think we should just be ourselves.

That is enough

Prejudice- We all live in the same house

My english class has recently been studying Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird: a book that deals with the issue of racism. The book has made me think about prejudice and how I am faced with it in my life.

I live out in the country near the town where I go to school, Elmira. Kitchener-Waterloo is only a ten minutes drive away, the nearest city. Despite this nearness, Elmira is entirely different than Waterloo in that we have very little variation in races. When we travel to the city schools, I notice that maybe half of the people there are either of African, Asian or middle eastern decent.

Like me, most of the people who live in Elmira and out in the surrounding countryside, have backgrounds like German, Dutch, or British; European countries. I myself am roughly half British and half German. There are very little Asians, Africans, or Middle Easterners.

Despite the fact that there are hardly any differences in races in Elmira, one of my best friends is asian. She doesn't have any problem having friends or with people judging her because she is so nice to everyone. In fact, everyone who knows her talks about how kind she is. I think we can learn a lesson from her. No matter who they are, my friend doesn't judge them and treats everyone equal.

Even though we don't have a lot of the kind of prejudice most people think of, against blacks or asians, there is a form of prejudice at my school.

Where I live, there are a lot of Mennonites. Even though most Mennonites also originated in Germany, they are considered very different and a lot of segregation occurs between them and me. Most Mennonites only go to school until they reach their fourteenth birthday, after which the boys stay at home learning farming or whatever their family occupation is. The girls learn how to keep house and prepare for keeping their own home some day. However there are some that come to high school but they are mostly in their own program. Some do not wish to associate with other kids because they believe we are "worldly" and may be a bad influence on them.

Yes Mennonites are different. I drive a car, most of them drive buggies. I wear jeans, most of the mennonites girls wear dresses.

But, even though we are different, I think we should strive to be empathetic and attempt to understand others, not only mennonites but anyone, because everyone is different and has their own way of doing things, and their way of life. We are different, but we are all people, brothers for we all live in the same house: Earth.

HOW I get C O N N E C T E D to the W O R L D with T E C H N O L O G Y

How do I get connected? Well, I have facebook and email. Although I have these things, which I probably spend about twenty minutes a day on, I much prefer to speak to people in person.
Before I came to highschool I was homeschooled and I wrote out all of my assignments by hand and was the slow, 'pointer-finger-only-typer' The summer before grade nine My Mum made me type a paragraph and do these wierd games to help you learn how to type evey single day. By the time school came around, I was almost as good at typing as my older brother who is on his computer any chance he can get. I got an email address that summer too and now I enjoy socializing with friends that I can't see very often and facebook helps keep me organized on which events Im going to and also a way I can communicate with my brother and his wife who live in BC. Technology has helped me immensly with school projects and It's also fun and thats how I get connected to the world through technology,