Sierra Olsen

  There are few places in the world that I feel are Holy. I haven't been to the temple in over a year, and I rarely physically go to our church on Sundays.  But this week, my Holy Place was a hallway. It was when my mom slid her phone under the door of my COVID infected sister's room so she could say what we think are our goodbyes to our dying 89 year old grandpa.  The end of his life has been excruciatingly painful. He's a scientist, a well-traveled and well-known scholar with an extremely sharp mind - hence why he's become so frustrated with his body as it fails to keep up with his brain. As much as he has hurt these past years, he's never once said that he just wanted to die. Now he's saying that. And we can't even give him a goodbye hug. This is an extremely personal story, one that I have a little hesitation about sharing. However, I feel that someone needs to know that, even though we haven't been able to go to temples or church or attend Family Ho...

  My life as a cosplayer is complete - the creator of the mini series that I cosplay from shared my most recent post! He shares maybe one-three posts from other people each week, rarely cosplayers. I was so unbelievably shocked when I opened his story and saw my face there! My notifications were going absolutely bonkers for the rest of the day. I hope it's not annoying that I talk about my hobbies so much (cosplay in particular). It's quite literally the one thing that got me through the pandemic - it gave me a chance to express, to practice a new talent (I've improved my makeup techniques significantly over the past 10 months), and, most importantly, I've made many new friends online that I would have never known. The internet is such a useful tool, especially during a time where we can't physically meet new people.

My sister hates reading- so much to the point that we think it may be due to a possible reading disorder (we suspect dyslexia but she hasn’t been tested yet). She hates reading for classes, no matter how many times I read out loud to her or act out certain scenes (which she enjoys more than sitting down and reading). And she NEVER reads on her own. I’m obsessed with manga and graphic novels, and they are what made me an avid reader when I was young. So, when my sister noticed how often I’m holding a book that has pictures in it or when I’m cosplaying a character from my favorite manga, she’s curious. And, today, she picked up a book. Involuntarily. For the first time.  To all of those who say graphic novels aren’t real books: my sister picked one up this morning, on her own accord, out of curiosity. And she finished the whole thing. She got to experience the feeling of turning the last page of a book, hoping for more. And I’m eager to provide it. 

  I got to see my grandpa today. That's still really weird to say - "got to see" instead of "I saw". After the flurry of what we now know so well to be a scary pandemic settled into our lives, our family (obviously) all stayed put in our own homes - that meant no family functions and no physical therapy for my grandpa. Now, after months of weakening muscles and low motivation, my grandpa is scarily close to giving up the ghost. My family won't allow this to happen, at least not until he turns 90.  I say it's weird to say "got to see" instead of "I saw" because, as cheesy as it is, I always took my grandparents for granted before the pandemic. When my grandma started calling my mom nearly 20 times a day to tell her that "Dick (my grandpa) hasn't eaten in days" or "Dick woke up every hour last night", my mom realized the gravity of the situation - Dick was dying. He went to one rehab center for about a month wher...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1koIC1xdX0URtpqbOFd0OU33721hxzHz7SMkdlcGhv4Q/edit?usp=sharing Reflecting on this project, I am unsure if I would use it in my high school class. Although I did enjoy many aspects of this project, it just seems a bit too unbridled and individualistic for high school students. That being said, I believe this project was appropriate for both our age and skill level. We were given the freedom to discuss what we wanted to, which was way fun to explore where our lives and opinions intersected. I still believe that an overall theme would have been helpful. Our guided discussions at the beginning where pretty helpful at accomplishing an individual theme for our performance, but I was still not sure about what was expected of us. I would have also appreciated to see more examples since I was kind of unsure about what was expected, despite having a grading rubric. If I were to adapt this project for high school students, I would have formatted it to align w...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1koIC1xdX0URtpqbOFd0OU33721hxzHz7SMkdlcGhv4Q/edit?usp=sharing