Hey you,
Right now, I’m sitting on a porch in Bloomington, Indiana, watching fireflies blink like tiny solar panels. The cicadas are louder than Glasgow traffic. You’ve survived the heat, the culture shock, and the Midwestern servings of cheese. I hope you’re proud of what you’ve done here – not only as a student, but as a voice.
You worried, before you left, about the flight. Myclimate told you it would cost 2.1 tonnes of CO₂ to get here and back – three times the per-person yearly target. You hesitated. You googled trains to New York. You despaired. But you came, promising to make it count.
You joined the Sustainable Finance Club and discussed SDG 12 – responsible consumption, where you showed everyone the Too Good To Go app and blew someone’s mind with Lidl’s bottle return scheme. You talked circular economy, and learned the phrase “eco-anxiety” isn’t well-known here, but people get it when you talk about the weight of knowing too much and doing too little.
You used SDG Action Zone to frame your goals. You switched to Ecosia and made it your homepage. You carried your own fork as if it were sacred cutlery passed down by Scottish eco-ancestors. You navigated the land of paper straws and plastic EVERYTHING and managed to create less waste than you feared.
You started a “Meatless Monday” potluck in your dorm, and spoke up when someone in class lazily uttered “recycling doesn’t matter.” You countered with figures from Our World in Data. They listened.
You were terrified of being “that girl” – too preachy, too intense. But you found there’s strength in softness. You weren’t perfect. You weren’t supposed to be. You were present. Intentional. Real.
And more importantly, you took time to breathe. When the climate news felt like too much, you went outside and just…looked up at the sky. Because panic doesn’t plant trees – but you might.
Sometimes you used plastic. Sometimes you got tired, but you kept trying. You downloaded HappyCow to find vegetarian restaurants. You composted. You reused Amazon boxes to build a DIY bookshelf. You even joined a campus volunteer group that helped clean up the local Clear Creek Trail – SDG 15 (Life on Land), check.
Sustainability here feels different. Indiana is car-heavy, sprawling, and proud of its corn-fed roots. But you found local farmers’ markets, talked to vendors about food waste, and even wrote a blog post for Kelley’s website about sustainable swaps for international students.
Maybe you still feel like you haven’t done enough. But here’s the truth: you never will. That’s not failure, just the scale of the work.
So, keep fighting. Keep planting seeds for others to water, and hold onto what your professor said during orientation:
“You’re not here to save the world. You’re here to know it well enough to change it.”
And you’re doing exactly that. One reusable fork at a time.
With hope (and bug spray),
Future You
Resources referenced:
https://co2.myclimate.org/en/calculate_emissions
https://sdgzone.com/action/how-can-i-contribute
https://www.ecosia.org
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
https://www.bloomington.in.gov/farmers-market
https://www.happycow.net
