Korean Expat Community for National Disasters

• 목록

As a graduate student, I spend most of my day inside the lab. In the past, checking the weather outside and choosing what to wear for the day felt natural. These days, however, I pay more attention to the temperature inside the lab than to the weather outdoors. In fact, one of the first things I do when I arrive is adjust the heating or air conditioning.

What feels strange is that the outdoor temperature often no longer seems like the most important part of the day. It may feel warm, or even hot, on my way to campus, but once I enter the lab, the indoor temperature can feel completely different. Sometimes it feels too warm, and other times it feels too cold. Because of that, I find myself dressing less for the season and more for the indoor environment. Even my physical comfort depends more on air conditioning and heating than on the weather outside.

Of course, this is partly connected to graduate school life and the long hours I spend indoors. But it also feels like a small sign of how climate change is reshaping everyday life. As the weather becomes more unstable and temperatures grow more extreme, people seem to rely more and more on controlled indoor spaces. In the past, the seasons naturally shaped how I felt throughout the day. Now, artificial indoor climate seems to matter more.

We often imagine the climate crisis through dramatic disasters such as floods, wildfires, or heat waves. But the change I notice in my own life is quieter. At some point, I became someone who is more sensitive to indoor temperature than to the season outside. In that sense, climate change is not only something happening in the distance. It is also changing the way I experience ordinary life, one room at a time.