Hello world and welcome back to another week of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! For the past couple of weeks in my English class, we have been reading the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. This book is by far one of my favorites that I have ever read in any of my English classes. I have learned so much from this novel, such as what it is like to grow up during Mao's Cultural Revolution. The author has given me such a vivid idea of re-education that it is almost like I have lived through it. The two main characters of the book, known as the unnamed narrator and his friend Luo, have been living through it for months. Just reading about their day to day adventures and experiences gives me such a large idea of what re-education is like. I think that learning about a historical time in a fictional novel is more intimate than reading it straight from facts because when there are characters and someone for you to relate to and be apart of is something that draws people into the novel and becomes more intrigued by it. It also lets people experience this time as if they were in the book themselves, which is something really special. I overall love this book so very much and I will be sad when it comes to an end.

To end this post, one of my favorite quotes from the book itself,
" P.S. I just remembered something funny I wanted to tell you: since your visit I've come across several people whose second toes are longer than their big toes, just like ours. I'm disappointed, but that's life."
- Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress 
Thank you for reading and I hope to see you next time!

Hello everybody and welcome back to another week of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! This past week was the last week of my first quarter into my sophomore year, to say the least I was surprised at how fast this year is already going by. English is of course my favorite class as it has always been and it will probably always be. I believe that so far into the year I am doing very good in my class thus far. I have always enjoyed reading and writing. It was just something that I was good at I guess. I have noticed that I am very good at adding notes here and there in the conversations that can add a new idea to what we were discussing. I feel like I participate a lot but I definitely could participate more than I do now. I could benefit from myself by practicing my vocab much more than I do. I do really good on the quizzes the week with the new words but I struggle a little with remembering the old ones. Overall I feel that this first quarter of the year has been very successful and I am excited to continue the year with this good feeling! I also cannot wait to get to know my classmates more and learn new things everyday that will help me better understand literature!

My quote of the week is in the image above! 

"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend" -Henry David Thoreau 

Thank you for reading this weeks addition of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! Hope you will read again next week!

Hello world and welcome back to another week of, you guessed it, Sierra's Weekly Sayings! So this week an event has been brought to my attention, National Banned Book Week. In all honesty I had no idea this week even existed. I knew that some books were banned in the past but I never knew that it had a whole week dedicated to them. I took a look at the most recently challenged book list of 2015, and I am a little surprised about the novels that have been listed there. Out of all  the books on the list I have read three of them. Perks of Being a Wallflower, House on Mango Street, and The Complete Persepolis. I kinda agree with these three books being on the list. I have only read each of these books only once but the first time I did, I will admit it was a bit confusing, especially The Complete Persepolis. All three of these books each had different themes to them but they were all complex in their own ways. They all had a lot of ideas that might be difficult for people to understand because no one can fully understand what message the Author is trying to get across. I believe others might view these books as dangerous because it is showing people that it is ok to be different and that we are not all the same. Everyone is unique and in some cultures being different or standing out is considered dangerous. I am willing to risk everything in order to be able to read a book deemed illegal by my community. I would only stop if it ever put anyone I care about in harms way. I think the main reason I would still read it would be that I do not care what other people think and I would do it to be different. I love being unique and I would not trade who I am for the world.

Never forget to be unique and that it is ok to break the rules every once in a while, but for good reasons only. To end this post, a quote that I think is perfect for this weekly blog.
"A reader lives a thousand lives before they die, the ones who never read, live only one" -George RR Martin
Thanks for reading this weeks addition of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! Hope you read again next week!

Hello world and welcome back to yet another weekly post of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! This week I will be talking about the generation of wimps. I remember when I played soccer as a child and winning a lot. I always thought our team was very good, but now that I look back on it, I don't remember one time where we even scored a goal. I have s many articles about our generation being known as the generation of wimps and in some ways I think it is true. I completely agree with the fact that if a child never learns to lose, how will they finally react when they do? In all honestly I think that younger leagues should keep scores but I think it is still important for the coaches to do their jobs, and their jobs are to teach them to play the sport, and learn that winning is not everything, they are there to have fun. Related to this is the whole who is special and equal thing. In a way I agree with this. I think that if everyone if creative, smart, talented, and special, where is the individuality? In reality, not everyone is all of these things and they may never be. The equality people want is something that may never happen. Don't get me wrong, I would love everyone to be treated equal but we cannot all be physically equal, it is impossible. I am in no way offended by our generation being called the nation of wimps because in ways it is true. The things that bugs me is that the world is saying the if we can't win, no one can, or if we can't run fast, then no one can run fast. I want equality but not this way, I will not let us live in the world of "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut where everyone is handicapped physically and mentally in order to be fully equal.

To end this weeks post, one of my most recent quote discoveries,
" Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist. I dare say no one since Thomas Jefferson has really believed it." - Katharine Fullerton Gerould
Thanks for reading this weeks addition of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! Hope for you to read again next week!

Hello everybody and welcome back to Sierra's Weekly Sayings! This week I will be discussing the matters of where my happiness lies within the suffering of others. Oddly enough it seems that I tend to deal with this idea a lot. As a young girl in Middle school, I wanted to be happy and I wanted everyone else to be happy too, but that was not always the case. I remember once for a school trip, we were all put into small groups to travel with. I remember being in a group with all girls and I was pretty happy with who I was with. There were three groups. The one I was part of and two more. There was this other girl who was not a part of our group. She was very kind to everyone and smiled a lot. This time she was not smiling, she looked sad. She said she wanted to be part of our group but there were too many people in our group for her to fit. Nobody in my group wanted to trade with her, they were all happy with who that were with. I felt bad for her, so I asked if I could trade groups with her, she happily accepted my offer. Now that I look back on it, in order for the girls in my group to be happy, she was suffering. This relates to "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" because the girl was my suffering child in a way. She was sad and she suffered in order for us to be happy. Now that I am older I feel pretty silly about it honestly.

To end this post, a quote that I find very interesting, " Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better. " -Dr. Steven Maraboli       Thanks for reading this weeks addition of Sierra's Weekly Sayings! 

Hello everybody! Welcome back to Sierra's Weekly Sayings, where this week we will be discussing the idea of how social media influences our day to day lives. In the short story "Once Upon a Time" the author Nadine Gordimer tells of a bedtime story that has rather the opposite of a happy ending. It talks about how media and news can affect the way people view their own lives and the places they live in. Social media has a tendency to cause a large amount of panic whenever there is a threat anywhere in the world. This causes people to take more drastic actions then needed such as building a wall surrounding their home or putting up a new type of special lock system that is unnecessary. Another story that touches upon this is Barry Glassner's book The Culture of Fear where the author also speaks about how the more TV a person watches the more likely they are to being overly worried about situations that are less then likely to happen. I do believe that fear saturated media does have a large effect on peoples happiness because they spend so much time worrying about things that are most likely not to happen. I also believe that this could effect the criminal justice system because since people are more and more worrying about crime that the people will have an effect on crime justice such as longer prison time and harsher punishments that are uncalled for at most times. Overall I completely agree with the idea that media effects peoples happiness.

The picture above is an example of how media can have an effect on peoples lives and happiness. To end this blog, a quote that I find quite interesting about media
" The media's the most powerful thing on earth, they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. Because they control the minds of the masses." -Malcolm X

Hello and welcome to my second blog post! For this post I will be talking about an important event that took place not too long ago. It happened June 26 2015 actually. This was the day same sex marriage was legalized in all fifty states. The morning I woke up and had heard the news, I was so overcome with happiness. No words could describe what I was feeling, which brings me to my picture below. The image below is a picture of internet-youtube star, Tyler Oakley. Tyler makes hilarious weekly videos about his day to day life and makes people laugh a whole lot. He is such a sweet and genuine person and is never rude to anyone. Tyler has been openly gay to his fans and viewers from the start of his career. So the day that same sex marriage was legalized, he of course took to social media to post this picture.

No words can describe the emotions he is showing in this image. No words can describe what he is thinking either. The point is, is that everyone deserves happiness. We are all equal and we all deserve a chance to be who we are no matter what. We are all beautiful in our own ways. Thank you for reading and to end this post, one of my favorite quotes ever.

"I am, you are, everybody on this planet has the capability to do something extraordinary." 

               - Tyler Oakley