Travel has always been ordinary and complicated in my life. Coming from multilateral family background, crossing borders has often been necessary for family, study and identity. Flights and long car journeys have not felt exceptional. However, my exchange at Maastricht University has made me confront the fact that mobility is never neutral. Travel creates opportunity, but it also produces emissions, consumes resources and shifts environmental costs onto others.
As a law student, studying Sustainability and Private Law has helped me analyse this tension more critically. The module has shown me that sustainability is not only a moral preference, but a question of responsibility, allocation and long-term consequence. Private choices, including transport and consumption, can produce public harm. This matters because the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are not achieved only through state policy; they also depend on how individuals, institutions and communities change everyday behaviour.
I have therefore tried to apply the SDG directly to my exchange. SDG13: Climate Action is the most immediate. I do sometimes commute by car out of necessity, so I cannot present my placement as perfectly sustainable. However, recognising that contradiction has made my response more deliberate. When possible, I use the train to travel to Maastricht rather than treating the car as the default. Where repeated commuting would create unnecessary emissions, I have stayed in hostels. This is not only a practical decision; it is an attempt to reduce the carbon intensity of my placement.
That choice also applies SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. Staying in Maastricht rather than simply travelling in and out allows me to participate meaningfully in the city. Maastricht is small, but yet full of opportunities: academic discussions, local cafes, friendships, walks and conversations that would be lost if I treated the city only as a destination for classes. More sustainable travel has therefore also made my exchange more socially embedded.
In daily life, I try to apply SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production through smaller but repeated choices. I carry reusable items, reduce single-use plastics, limit food waste, conserve water and electricity, walk where possible and support local businesses when I can. These actions are modest, but the legal lesson I take from my module is that sustainability often depends on repeated patterns of conduct. A single act may seem insignificant, but habits create demand, and demand shapes systems.
My exchange also connects to SDG4: Quality Education. Studying sustainability while living abroad has made the Goals more than abstract international commitments. They have become a framework for judging my own conduct. The value of an international placement should not be measured only by academic achievement, but by whether it makes the student more responsible in the world.
Overall, Maastricht has changed how I understand travel. I still see mobility as valuable, especially for education and family connection, but I no longer see it as consequence-free. Sustainable travel, for me, means recognising the contradiction, reducing avoidable harm, and allowing legal education to influence how I live beyond the classroom.
