Courtney Balcombe

Creativity Editor

clb6264@psu.edu

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is one that really tests a person’s mental health. If you get COVID and you’re prescribed antibiotics that can help relieve some of the symptoms of COVID, they inform you that you can’t take some of your antidepressants. So how does one handle their mental health while they have to quarantine for a week or so?

Well some of the things I did included binge watching TV shows, this included shows I watched before such as “The Vampire Diaries,” “The Originals,” and catching up on “Gray’s Anatomy.” I even watched some new movies such as “Encanto,” “Marvel’s Eternals,” and once again “Five Feet Apart.”

I also tried to keep up with classes and homework as much as I could. However, missing a week of a foreign language class in person makes the homework a bit harder to understand. Luckily I had a friend who could send me notes and help with the homework as much as they could.

I also played video games with some friends over my PC and PS4 but slowly those would get boring to me since it’s the same thing over and over again. I replayed “Beyond Two Souls” which includes Elliot Page and Willem Dafoe as voice actors even though Page’s character is the main character, the only difference is that each choice changes the output of the game and I’ve only seen one of four endings.

Other games I played were “Horizon Zero Dawn” and “Borderlands 3” which were recommended to me by a friend, while the games are both new to me, they require a bit more focus than I could handle after playing for more than an hour.

I also thought about incorporating my Amazon Kindle and starting a new book, but after spending 20 minutes looking for a new book I decided it was more time than I wanted to spend looking rather than reading.

Doing these various activities helped me keep my mind busy and in turn kept me from spending time focusing on my messy room or how behind I would be in some of my classes, after finishing the antibiotics in five days and getting back on my antidepressants I quickly was able to get back to my routine that I had before testing positive for COVID.