This was a fun project and experience because I had never worked one on one with a professor and this was the first enhancement that I had done in my honors career. I worked with Dr. Ritzert to analyze various risk and protective factors and how these varying factors can contribute to higher or lower levels of mental health problems. I looked at two specific factors, which were social interaction and financial stability. With this project I wanted to specifically look at how the COVID-19 pandemic affected these factors and mental health of college students. In this project it was found that students who had more social interaction and financial stability during the pandemic experienced less symptoms of depression and anxiety than that of students who had little social interaction and financial stability. Skills that I learned from this project was task management and perseverance. For task management I had to spend time working on various tasks and I had to prioritize which tasks needed to be completed first. For perseverance there were some issues that I ran into with the project and one of the biggest ones is I struggled with getting the IRB to approve my project, but I kept pushing through and continued to make edits until it was approved and in the end it was and it turned out to be a great project.

Below is a button with a link to the Fall 2020 symposium where I presented my research from this enhancement.