"A full bloom starts as a seed." is something my mother has always said to me since I was very young. Since childhood I've loved the environment, participating in Beach Clean Up's and walking through parks. In high school, I was in the environmental club and built my way up to the president in my senior year. After I became president we held three beach clean-ups and held two fundraisers for Clean Ocean Action. I now have an associates in Environmental Science, and I've transferred to get a bachelor's in Earth and Environmental Sciences. During my final year of my associate's, I became an intern for PSE&G's Institute of Sustainability Green Team. During this internship, I learned the best ways to provide a sustainable lifestyle to myself and others around me, even to a political level. I worked with a nonprofit organization called Trust For Public Land which helps bring parks, greenspace, and fresh produce to low-income urban communities. I later applied to the company directly for a fellowship program, and I am currently a Community Schoolyard and Garden fellow for the Trust for Public Land. Now, I am currently conducting some paleoclimate research on rock samples to compare CO2 levels from hundreds of years ago to now to see how we can help the global climate emissions as they get higher and higher, and see how the Earth lowered them from all those years ago. If I planted my flag at the top of the mountain, I would leave the message "Nothing will work unless you do. All great achievements require time." A quote by Maya Angelo. I used to think that perhaps I was going too slow, or I wasn't meant for sustainability or geoscience because I wasn't smart enough or I didn't understand it. I would give up on hard problems quickly and just fail because it was easier. As I grew more and more, I realized that I was destined for greatness. If I set my mind to anything I will make it happen. Nothing can stop me and nothing will prevent me from soaring. I truly think it came with becoming president of my Environmental Club. After I hit that step, I knew that I could keep growing. I kept pushing and applying for different things after that, and at that point, I was just an unstoppable force. I will continue to grow, and keep excelling scientifically and sustainably, one carbon footprint at a time.

A hundred thousand years ago, this question was benign. Sustainable living was never really a question. Homo sapiens lived sustainably simply by living within their cultural grounds. Everything went back to the Earth with no issue. Now, with the boom of industry and the ability that I have to write this essay itself, humans must be mindful of how sustainable they are on a daily basis. Living a sustainable lifestyle is extremely important in my day-to-day life, as it should be for everyone else. Many people believe living sustainably must be a humungous life change that requires a whole new extortion of energy, but that is not the truth. It can be a large life change, but it can also be a simplistic thing. Taking shorter showers, using less water, turning off lights. Simple things such as this can reduce one's carbon footprint immensely. As a sustainable, geoscientist in the making, I do make slightly larger changes. All of the lights in my room are LED to conserve my personal energy use. I have installed a bidet on my toilet, and the toilet itself flushes on different levels according to the severity of the waste. In the upcoming spring for next year, my family and I are planning for a rain garden in our backyard that consists of completely native plants. During my commute to my job in Newark, I always try to use a train as a form of public transport. With the new plastic bag law, I've decided to change my way of living as well. With me, I now bring around a reusable straw, a reusable pair of utensils, and a metal water bottle. Although I said in the beginning that these were 'larger changes', as soon as it is applied it's almost unnoticeable. A couple of months ago, I did a waste audit for my family. We all decided that the amount of waste we produce was becoming ridiculous, not just for 'the environmentalists', as they like to call me, but for our wallets! We now have cut out all of those "Fresh" or "Blue Apron" boxes and shop locally at grocery stores and farmers markets whenever someone has a day off. I also now work at a non-profit organization called Trust For Public Land. Trust For Public Land has a mission statement of bringing parks and green trails to all communities. Many of these parks are created in urban or low-income areas to help their air quality and food deserts. By 2050, they have a goal of making sure everyone has a park within a 10-minute distance from their homes. Not only do they do this, but they are committed to making sure these parks are sustainable. As a member of TPL, we try to make sure we use green infrastructure in all of our parks and trails. Along with that, rain and/or pollen gardens are created in each park itself. Working for them has inspired me to live more sustainably as a person, and do whatever I can to help my job continue their powerful work. Lowering my carbon footprint is an important factor for me. As an American, as industry booms, sustainability lowers. Not only does lowering your carbon footprint assist global climate change, but lowering a carbon footprint improves public health, can boost the amount of money in your wallet, and can improve the aesthetic of your area completely. The average carbon footprint is 4.7 tonnes of CO2. If we can lower that as a society, there would be a lot more hope to improve our global climate than there is doubt.