Climate change is going to require collective action.

But how can individual actions make a difference?

On a new episode of Life Kit, we're walking you through

what sort of climate

week,

week, where ever you get your podcasts. Part of NPR's Climate Week, wherever you get your podcasts. So I am a high school student. I'm a senior in high school and right now is like

college application crunch time and so with that also comes like a lot of tests and essay deadlines and

everything's trying to get crammed in before we all leave school. And amidst all that

there was one phone call that I just completely missed, like completely slipped my mind.

I was working on something else, my phone was on silent, I didn't see it ring and I didn't realize until about an hour

later and it was too late and there was just nothing I could do and I was I felt

super helpless because I can't go back in time now and I also felt

really really guilty because I'm I've always been somebody that prides themselves on

reliability and also I really hate getting canceled on and so I felt

like this kind of guilt for hypothetically having you know ruined someone's day

or like messed up someone else's schedule like sweat

tingling in my back and like physically like this intense discomfort and like this

kind of nervousness that kind of went into the rest of my day, this feeling that whatever else I can do right in this day,

I still, you know, messed up this one thing and there's like nothing I can do that will undo that.

He's in the thick of college applications

feeling a lot of pressure and he's not alone.

Samuel Gaitachow is a 17 year old high school student and the 2019 Youth Poet

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