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Submission information
Submission Number: 465
Submission ID: 1601
Submission UUID: 13a9ba70-c6dc-4ba2-9310-501553a2c484
Submission URI:/center/mortenson/form/webform-1367
Created: Sat, 03/15/2025 - 12:46
Completed: Sat, 03/15/2025 - 12:46
Changed: Mon, 05/12/2025 - 05:30
Remote IP address: 2601:6c1:c001:78a0:c001:431a:ccaa:8fc
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English
Is draft: No
{Empty}
CJ
Yedlinsky
He/Him
Lansing
KS
United States of America
66043
Applied Mathematics/Economics
English (5), Spanish (3), German (1)
As a lifelong soccer player, I have had the opportunity to travel overseas to Italy and England and gain valuable knowledge as a scared foreigner in a new land. In Italy, I experienced the beautiful sceneries and language, but I also saw the lesser reported parts of southern Europe. Travelling to Mt. Vesuvius left me highly susceptible to pickpocketing and robbery while riding the packed cattle car trains. While the Vatican was an amazing spectacle of architecture and tradition, its reverence failed to prevent locals from stealing money through unsuspecting tourist trap attractions. A few years later, I visited England on another soccer trip. I knew I would be experiencing a very different part of Europe, but I was completely unaware of what I would discover. England introduced me to an interesting and very disparate scene from that of Italy: parallels in American and European culture.
An often overlooked quality of Europe is the true number of cultures that arise from its 44 countries. The impact that each one has had on the development of architecture styles, regional cuisines, and scientific discoveries across the world is widely regarded and notable to any American citizen. However, many aspects of the cultures in the U.S. have been brought from Europe through the colonization of the Americas; seeing them present in England was somehow surprising to me.
The interactions I had with English soccer players and coaches reminded me that the first settlers of the country I’ve always lived in were from this country that I was so scared to visit. As I came to this realization, my mind returned to my travels in Italy. While I was caught up in the gorgeous landscapes and new places to explore, I missed the connections between their world and mine back home. The people lived their lives just as many do back home: going to school and work, walking their dogs, hanging out with friends and family. Though there certainly are differences in what leisure activities people enjoy, what foods they eat, or how they speak, these differences merely represent the benefits of travelling. If you do your research and stay aware (which should be done in any unknown area, even domestically), travel is a phenomenal way to enjoy the nuances of a new country while still experiencing the normality of life back home. I no longer feel fear when I arrive in an unknown area because I’ve come to understand that the world is all connected. Every country is nothing more than a place for humans to enjoy different cultures while performing the same duties most people perform. I hope to bring my ability to find similarities in people I meet to the Global Engineering RAP and share my views on the importance of finding what makes us all connected.
An often overlooked quality of Europe is the true number of cultures that arise from its 44 countries. The impact that each one has had on the development of architecture styles, regional cuisines, and scientific discoveries across the world is widely regarded and notable to any American citizen. However, many aspects of the cultures in the U.S. have been brought from Europe through the colonization of the Americas; seeing them present in England was somehow surprising to me.
The interactions I had with English soccer players and coaches reminded me that the first settlers of the country I’ve always lived in were from this country that I was so scared to visit. As I came to this realization, my mind returned to my travels in Italy. While I was caught up in the gorgeous landscapes and new places to explore, I missed the connections between their world and mine back home. The people lived their lives just as many do back home: going to school and work, walking their dogs, hanging out with friends and family. Though there certainly are differences in what leisure activities people enjoy, what foods they eat, or how they speak, these differences merely represent the benefits of travelling. If you do your research and stay aware (which should be done in any unknown area, even domestically), travel is a phenomenal way to enjoy the nuances of a new country while still experiencing the normality of life back home. I no longer feel fear when I arrive in an unknown area because I’ve come to understand that the world is all connected. Every country is nothing more than a place for humans to enjoy different cultures while performing the same duties most people perform. I hope to bring my ability to find similarities in people I meet to the Global Engineering RAP and share my views on the importance of finding what makes us all connected.
The concept that diversity increases strength is not limited to biological and evolutionary studies. Great minds capable of engineering the next invention that revolutionizes how we live day-to-day can, and historically do, come from every corner on our spherical earth. In order to improve the field of engineering, the importance of travelling to encounter new ways of thinking and processes of making ideas tangible can not be stressed enough–it is a necessity.
Until I entered middle school, I was accustomed to changing where I lived every two or four years, as required by my dad’s military service. While being placed in new schools and forced to make new friends so often was daunting and terrifying to my elementary-age self, it strengthened my ability and desire to seek different change as I grew older and came to live in one state for so long after my dad’s retirement. Though I’m happy to not change my friend group anytime the Olympics start up again, the urge to find new people with new perspectives and ideas has, fortunately, remained. In middle school, I involved myself in a future cities competition that required our group to build a city safe from a specific natural disaster; our disaster turned out to be earthquakes.
This was a major issue for us. Kansas may be known for some disasters, but certainly not earthquakes. The best approach to this problem was to first investigate earthquake-proof engineering in a country that has evolved to minimize the effects. In doing so, we remembered a student at our school that had moved from Japan the year before. We knew it couldn’t be asked of him to understand how the engineering worked–we barely knew–, his ability to see the difference in our architecture versus his home nation’s gave us the knowledge we needed to create a potential solution.
The time I spent building our city was enjoyable, but not as rewarding as finding a solution using the experiences of someone not native to the U.S. Most importantly, I found why global experiences can improve the field of engineering: if you don’t have a solution, there’s a good chance someone has experienced the problem being solved and can contribute to your plan. By looking outside of our inner circles and making attempts to interact with those different from us, problems foreign to us can be solved with the assistance of someone who they may not be foreign to. Global experiences provide the perspective we could never find by remaining sedentary and I hope to find more of those experiences in my time at CU Boulder.
Until I entered middle school, I was accustomed to changing where I lived every two or four years, as required by my dad’s military service. While being placed in new schools and forced to make new friends so often was daunting and terrifying to my elementary-age self, it strengthened my ability and desire to seek different change as I grew older and came to live in one state for so long after my dad’s retirement. Though I’m happy to not change my friend group anytime the Olympics start up again, the urge to find new people with new perspectives and ideas has, fortunately, remained. In middle school, I involved myself in a future cities competition that required our group to build a city safe from a specific natural disaster; our disaster turned out to be earthquakes.
This was a major issue for us. Kansas may be known for some disasters, but certainly not earthquakes. The best approach to this problem was to first investigate earthquake-proof engineering in a country that has evolved to minimize the effects. In doing so, we remembered a student at our school that had moved from Japan the year before. We knew it couldn’t be asked of him to understand how the engineering worked–we barely knew–, his ability to see the difference in our architecture versus his home nation’s gave us the knowledge we needed to create a potential solution.
The time I spent building our city was enjoyable, but not as rewarding as finding a solution using the experiences of someone not native to the U.S. Most importantly, I found why global experiences can improve the field of engineering: if you don’t have a solution, there’s a good chance someone has experienced the problem being solved and can contribute to your plan. By looking outside of our inner circles and making attempts to interact with those different from us, problems foreign to us can be solved with the assistance of someone who they may not be foreign to. Global experiences provide the perspective we could never find by remaining sedentary and I hope to find more of those experiences in my time at CU Boulder.
The Global Engineering RAP will bring me valuable learning experience I would otherwise not be able to carry into the engineering world. Opportunities to meet diverse engineers with unique perspectives on the field are important to understanding potential solutions to potentially impossible problems. My journey to becoming an engineer will be academically difficult and the Global Engineering RAP has the resources to provide additional benefits as I progress towards my degree. As a member of the Global Engineering RAP, I hope to take advantage of these resources at any given opportunity.
Being part of a community with shared interests is vital to finding success in a learning environment. Even though students can thrive in a community not tailored directly to their interests, it is all the more valuable to live around like-minded learners with similar engineering goals. By being a part of the Global Engineering RAP community, my training as an engineer will be better streamlined when surrounded by numerous engineers and earnest workers. Furthermore, I envision my mindset as a student and professional to become more refined as a result of living in a community with other engineers. I will have the resources to gain better critical thinking skills and problem solving methods as a member of the Global Engineering RAP’s residential community.
It’s important to tailor your work environment to be practical and productive to any goals you set. The Global Engineering RAP and its residential community has the engineering work environment I need to be as successful as possible while studying at CU Boulder. As a member, I know I possess the drive necessary to find success as an engineer and the Global Engineering RAP has the resources to help me find greater success.
Being part of a community with shared interests is vital to finding success in a learning environment. Even though students can thrive in a community not tailored directly to their interests, it is all the more valuable to live around like-minded learners with similar engineering goals. By being a part of the Global Engineering RAP community, my training as an engineer will be better streamlined when surrounded by numerous engineers and earnest workers. Furthermore, I envision my mindset as a student and professional to become more refined as a result of living in a community with other engineers. I will have the resources to gain better critical thinking skills and problem solving methods as a member of the Global Engineering RAP’s residential community.
It’s important to tailor your work environment to be practical and productive to any goals you set. The Global Engineering RAP and its residential community has the engineering work environment I need to be as successful as possible while studying at CU Boulder. As a member, I know I possess the drive necessary to find success as an engineer and the Global Engineering RAP has the resources to help me find greater success.
CJ Y Resume.docx(109.92 KB)