“My grandma passed away and then my knee thing happened …”

Makena Swenson

“I think for myself, life has been difficult because of my knee injuries. I tore my ACL so I’m out for a year, and I recently just did it again. I think it makes life difficult because I can’t do the thing I love, or what takes my mind off of stuff, so that’s a big disadvantage. I try to stay positive in any way that I can. Hanging out with friends or just thinking about if sports aren’t an option right now, I can focus more on school and have more time for homework, and I just look at it that way.”

“I would definitely say anyone in my family. Probably like my mom, and my dad, and my older sister. They’ve always helped me with anything, and my sister has gone through the same thing so she can relate to it. Sometimes I isolate myself with my issues because sometimes I just don’t feel like talking about it. But other times if I really feel like I need to express myself and let it out then I will. My whole life I’ve played sports and my friends play sports so, of course it runs through my head a lot. I think it’s more difficult this time because, you’d think it’d be easier but it’s not because it’s a longer process. It’s supposed to be a longer healing time before you’re back because you have a less chance to make it again. Last time I did physical therapy, but I don’t think I rehabbed as well as I could have, so this time I want to try to do that better. I’m most likely hoping to come back and not get injured again. There’s still my junior and senior year. Just knowing what is going to happen helps me not be nervous or not be new at something and I can just do it better than I did before. If I had this mindset before then it might not have happened again.”

“So far this year hasn’t been the best. Not because of school, I think school is fine, but it is kind of weird. I liked last year better, but I think it will just take time for it to get better. My grandma passed away and then my knee thing happened, which sucks. Probably in the same month. It was really difficult. It was a lot of mixed emotions like angry, frustrated, you’re sad. It just felt like things were being piled on top of each other and it wasn’t going to get better but I think it’s slowly getting better.”

“I hope to see my grades stay really good. They’re like decent right now but I know they can be a lot better so I hope that throughout the year in 2020 gets good and my family stays positive with everything. Especially my dad. My sister is a junior so I hope she does good and gets good grades so she can go to a good college.”