Students Discover New Hobbies Over Quarantine

Being stranded at home and stuck with the everlasting feelings of boredom was nobody’s choice, but for two students they found a way to use the time to discover new hobbies that they will remember forever.

Sophomore Nash Merklein used his creative mind to build his own fully functioning go-kart. “I had always had the idea of building a go-kart in my head, but never had the time to get started on a project this big,” Merklein said.

The project was completed after four months of hard work, with the shut down in place Merklein said, “quarantine was the time I put the idea into action.”

There were many moving parts to the project in order to get the results envisioned in the designing stage of the process. “When looking for an electric motor, I had a friend give one to me that he had gotten from the back of an electric wheelchair,” Merklein said.

Merklein used his grandparents' car garage when working in the evenings and used his Dad’s help for a lot of the manufacturing of the wood structure. “Without the help of these people, I would have never finished the kart and made it into what it is today,” Merklein said.

Junior Connor Martin used his time to start running on a more consistent basis. Martin said, “It wasn’t until quarantine that I started going for a run every day.” Martin said he was “looking for something to keep me occupied and healthy.”

With some encouragement from his parents, Martin continued on his running stint and eventually was recruited from a future cross country teammate to join the team. Martin said, “I had no intentions of turning a light activity into weeks of intense training.”

“Quarantine has brought many challenging obstacles, but also has provided me with a new passion,” Martin said. This discovery has set Martin’s sights forward to possibly joining the track team in the spring and returning for his senior year cross country season.

Heather Morrison, a reporter from Mass Live, noted that 35 percent of Americans look to continue pursuing their new found pandemic hobbies. Although the pandemic has brought waves of struggle and hardships, it has forced people to discover something they never imagined would draw interest.

Merklein and Martin are prime examples of how to make the best out of the worst possible situation.