The heaviest thing in my suitcase won’t be my winter coat.
It won’t be the textbooks I convince myself I need, or the collect of cables that somehow knot themselves together no matter carefully they are packed. It won’t even be the uncertainty of moving across an ocean to study in a place where winters are colder, the streets unfamiliar, and the people strangers.
The heaviest thing I will carry with me is the awareness that my generation has inherited a world already under strain.
Every journey now seems to come with contradiction. We travel to broaden our understanding of the world while becoming more and more conscious of the environmental impact of the movement itself. For a long time, I believed these ideas existed separately from one another – travel on one side, sustainability on the other. Preparing for my year abroad has made me realise they cannot be separated at all.
Sustainability is not only about reducing harm. It is about learning how to exist more thoughtfully in the world and alongside other people. As a psychology student, I am fascinated by the ways human behaviour is shaped by culture, environment, and community. Studying abroad in Guelph will allow me to experience perspectives beyond my own. Real change rarely happens in isolation; it grows through observation and collaboration. I want to understand how another community approaches environmental awareness through everyday habits like transport and collective responsibility.
The most sustainable ideas are often the quietest ones. Sustainable futures are built not only with large-scale changes, but through the accumulation of everyday choices people encourage in one another. For my own year abroad, I intend to approach travel more consciously than I ever have before. I plan to minimise unnecessary flights during my stay, rely on public transport where possible, reduce waste through reusable products, and support local businesses rather than unsustainable convenience culture. I also hope to bring these sustainable ideas home from my time abroad.
Travel changes more than location. It changes perspective. Living somewhere new forces you to notice the invisible rules of your own life. Sustainability begins in learning to pay attention again. Although awareness alone won’t save the planet alone, it should offer the encouragement to act. Psychology teaches that meaningful change rarely arrives all at once, it happens gradually, by one person influencing another. This is what I hope to bring back from Canada with me. Not souvenirs, not photographs, not proof that I stood in front of famous monuments long enough to post online. I hope to return with a different understanding of possibility. One rooted in connection and hope rather than guilt. Climate crisis is often described in numbers, yet at its core it is about people. It is about the futures we make possible for one another.
Perhaps the real weight we carry when we travel is the knowledge that the world is shared and the hope that we might learn to exist in it more responsibly.
