Items

• 2020-09-18

  Golfing During COVID

  I first became uneasy about the coronavirus when the US government started to make mandates about what businesses were to close, the limits of crowds, and when they made wearing a face mask in public mandatory. At first, I did not notice a significant difference in everyday life. The biggest change for me was moving out of my dorm room at Duquesne University and going home where I would complete the rest of the semester online. It was a very different experience in the sense I never would have thought that I would be completing my first full year of college education at home. With that being said, I got very used to attending class and completing work virtually. Moreover, as time went on, I realized at the time that the biggest change, the weirdest aspect of the pandemic was that almost every business was closed (except for the essential businesses) or at the very least open for only a few hours out of the day and there were many restrictions on the amount of people allowed in a given building at any time. For the first three or four weeks of quarantine, I struggled to find activities to do while I wasn’t in a Zoom session or doing homework. That was the worst part for me because I am someone who loves to be doing something all the time. It is hard for me to sit around inside all day not doing much. So, when May 1st came around, the government allowed golf courses to open in Pennsylvania. I have always enjoyed golfing in my free time even in the years prior to this pandemic. But when golf was allowed to open back up in PA, I began to golf more and more as it was one of the few activities that I could enjoy. Golf is not a sport where someone would come into contact with very many people in general so, I began golf quite frequently as it was a perfect way for me to ‘de-stress’ from being cooped up in my house attending zoom calls and doing homework problems for what seemed like one long day that didn’t really end. That brings me to my next point which was that pandemic life took a toll on my mental health. Waking up every day knowing that I was strongly encouraged to stay at home and if, in the case I did leave the house, I had to keep my distance from other people. To me, it felt like pandemic life was a very cyclical way of living which lacked variance. It was the same thing every day for weeks on end. Just that state-of-mind was probably the largest toll that pandemic had on my life. Fortunately, though, it seems as though we are through the worst parts of the coronavirus pandemic. I am seeing more and more businesses re-open which is encouraging. And hopefully we can continue being safe in order to get over the virus and back to normal life.