Essential Question: How are the limitations on exercise and physical activity during the coronavirus pandemic impacting mental health?

With the social isolation, inability to get outdoors, and lack of a normal routine due to the coronavirus pandemic, I have found myself with increased levels of stress and irritability. I have been developing ways to manage these emotions, and through my senior project I have found that exercise is very effective for me. One experience that stands out to me happened last week. I was doing the laundry in the basement of my apartment building and the machine was malfunctioning. I spent half an hour troubleshooting until I finally had to give up and leave the laundry for another day. While under normal circumstances this would simply be a minor inconvenience, I found myself unreasonably angry and unable to go about the rest of my day. I was too distracted to get any work done, so instead I decided to put on a mask and go outside for a walk. Immediately, this fresh air and the ability to move around freely eased my stress and tension. While I had been doing scheduled exercise all week, this helped me realize that my exercise didn’t need to be so structured in order to reap these benefits and a simple walk could also be beneficial to my mental health. 

As I have found consistently throughout my research and interviews, exercise is an effective way to reduce stress levels. This experience provided me with personal evidence of this claim. While out on my walk, I found myself thinking about the scientific ways that exercise impacts the brain and helps reduce stress. It was really interesting to know what was going on in my brain and body while it was actually happening, and this helped me put my research into perspective. I found that this method of combining experiential learning with more traditional learning, such as reading articles and taking a course, was very effective for me. While these uncertain times can often make me feel unmotivated or anxious, I have found that pushing myself to work on my project and trying to answer my essential question, even if this is through personal research such as exercising, helps me reduce this stress.