Submission Number: 426
Submission ID: 1387
Submission UUID: 06d1048b-ba2a-42a4-a3fe-7085c2e81775

Created: Thu, 05/30/2024 - 14:47
Completed: Thu, 05/30/2024 - 14:47
Changed: Sun, 05/11/2025 - 08:41

Remote IP address: 2600:8800:28c:9500:bc92:71f2:d8cd:7e53
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Flagged: Yes
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James
Nguyen
he/him
Phoenix
Arizona
United States
85051
Computer Science
English (5), Vietnamese (5), Japanese (1)
I have traveled both inside the country and internationally, and it’s what I aspire to do in my life outside of Computer Science. I really enjoy experiencing different weather, architecture, and cultural differences in every location. Inside the country, I have traveled to Seattle and Portland, where I visit my older sisters (one of whom did grad school at CU). I really enjoy the highly urban feeling of Seattle, with high rises everywhere I walked and a bustling city culture that differs greatly from my suburban neighborhood. Additionally, I recently went to Michigan as a solo traveler during my spring break, where the importance and value of experiencing different perspectives completely independently shone. It felt extremely freeing to travel independently, and it’s definitely a large factor in my decision to attend CU out of state. Internationally, I have traveled to Dubai and Vietnam, my home country. Vietnam, especially, was the most important trip of my life, as I was able to experience what it felt like to be truly integrated into my Vietnamese culture. Whether that was experiencing the bustling nightlife of Saigon, or living at my mother’s old house in a rural village for 4 days, the differences were apparent- the people spoke Vietnamese more fluently and more enunciated than my family, the streets were often poverty stricken and informally paved, and the culture was a more intensified version of the culture I often experience at home. Even if it’s a 4 hour flight to the midwest, or a 19 hour flight to Vietnam, every trip is a meaningful addition to my cultural awareness, allowing me to occasionally slip outside of the suburban Phoenix that I have grown up in.
I hope that, by living in Williams Village North, I can meet a community of people who are culturally diverse and also motivated academically. I would love for my community in Global Engineering to be people who are willing to have conversations about global issues that the general public may shy away from today, including topics like global poverty (regarding water and electricity) and environmental dangers. Additionally, I’m hoping that the people I meet in Global Engineering also have diverse cultural experience- although I’ve loved my travel experience, I haven’t had the opportunity to travel to many other countries, especially in Europe, South America, and Africa. By joining a diverse and welcoming community in Global Engineering, I’d love to have casual conversations about living or experiencing different countries that will increase the strength of my cultural perspectives, while still maintaining the rigorous and academic curriculum that engineering provides.
I want to be a member of the Global Engineering RAP as I aspire to blend the cultural experience that I hold so close to me with the technological power of engineering to, ideally, assist people that do not have easy access to modernized engineering. I love the smaller, tight-knit community that living in Williams Village North can provide by being in a RAP, and I hope to find my own set of similarly motivated people through Global Engineering. I also like the idea of minoring in Global Engineering, as foreign language requirements and global perspective-based courses combine my love for linguistics along with engineering and foreign experience. By bringing my excitement and lightheartedness for multicultural experiences, with my aspirations for things like study abroad and travel generally, I want to be a helpful and bubbly personality for the Global Engineering community. Through a community full of like-minded individuals who share the same desire for global impact, I hope that Global Engineering is able to accentuate my love for cultural awareness and engineering.
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