Our research question concerned how life stories shape university students' understanding of the sustainable use of natural resources. We searched for an answer for this question by listening to the life stories of nine students from a public university in Turkey. The difference between this research and former work is that we were not concerned with professionals rather we interviewed the university students. While interviewing students, we only asked them to think about their life experience so far and tell us what shaped their thinking on sustainability. The evaluations of the stories displayed that the people, time, and places were different, but the outcomes of the stories were not. The students reflected the role of their family, especially their mothers' tendency for the sustainable use of natural resources in shaping their own attitudes and behaviors toward sustainability.