Ecological Footprint

After doing all the calculations and finding how much ecological footprint I produce. I was surprised to find out that I have every high ecological footprint in places that I thought would be the lowest. For example for goods and services my result was triple the average American. I thought I would have less because I am not a big spender and I know how to take care of the things I have so they last for a very long time. However, I was not taking into consideration, that education falls into this category and average American do not go to college. In addition, the tuition to attend a public school is very high, much higher than going to a community college. Therefore, my results were way high compared to an average American.
On the other hand, the other categories were lower to the average American, which made me be proud of my life style. For food the average result is 5.5 and according to my calculations it was 3.6. This is somewhat lower than the average. However, my result was based on my judgment about what I eat, because I really do not know what goes into my food because I eat daily in the school cafeteria. However, another reason that I’m certain of that is a reason why my food result was lower than the average is because I only eat twice a day, instead of tree, and I do not eat snacks between meals. Furthermore, when people usually live in a house with a back yard, I share a 12x10 ft room with other two people, thus my housing ecological footprint went down greatly. However, I pay a lot for this room, which I do not agree with. Continuing this a little further, because in college I cannot have a car, or it is almost impossible to have one I do not go places that often. The only transportation that I use more often is the train to back home. Home is about 150 miles away from here, and I go home about twice a month, and for that weekend that I am home I use the car. However, it is not compared as how much the average American uses their car. My result was .67 compared to 5.1 of the average American.
Unfortunately I cannot do a lot about my goods and services footprint because I cannot control how much tuition I need to pay in my school. I already dot spend that much in medicine, telephone, medical insurance or entertainment. That are the things that I can control. However, I can control what I eat and how much waste I produce. As a short term goal to lower my ecological footprint I will stop drinking water out plastic bottles and use an aluminum bottle instead. This will really help since I buy great amount of water bottles. My medium term goal is to lower my consumption of paper. I print a lot of articles and essays when I could just read them in the computer. However, because the screen of the computer makes my eyes really tired is really hard to not want to just print out the paper. However, I have already started to read the assigned reading online, however is hard to take notes. But at least is a start. As my long term goal, I will be eating meat only two days a week. Currently I eat meat at least once a day. This is a long term goal because it will take some time before it will start impacting the ecosystem. I like this goal because I will help my health but I will still get my protein form other grain and those days that I do eat meat. In addition, it will help the environment, because my goal is that less animals are killed, which means less acres will be needed. To be able to accomplish this goal, I will have my friends help me out. They will go with me to dinner and help me no eat so much meat.