Submission Number: 35
Submission ID: 299
Submission UUID: 0739f4d2-c7d4-445d-975a-15fa4936dd17

Created: Wed, 04/14/2021 - 19:58
Completed: Wed, 04/14/2021 - 19:58
Changed: Tue, 05/06/2025 - 09:13

Remote IP address: 209.6.128.40
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Flagged: Yes
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Oliver
Shapiro
he/him
Brookline
MA
USA
02446
Undecided
English (5), Spanish (4), French (1)
For most summers of my early childhood, my family would do a “house swap” with families from Spain. Over two or three weeks, my family would do a traditional tourist’s duty of seeing the sights around our temporary home, but we would also get to know the local community. We had barbecues with our neighbors, got late-night ice cream with them, and learned about their lives (in our halting Spanish!). By interacting not only with the physical beauty of a town or city but also with the people that made up the place, my family was able to get a full, memorable experience of what these places truly were like. We also formed lasting connections with many of the families we got to know - we ended up hosting various exchange students from the families over the years, including one who spent an entire school year with us in the US. While we haven’t swapped houses with any Spanish families in recent years, these experiences of connecting with local culture and community influence how I approach travel and experience new places. Whether I’m camping and hiking in the mountains or wandering through a new city, I like to connect with people and to learn about where they come from and how they think. I believe that this ability to connect with people from different cultures and backgrounds would help me to thrive in the global engineering program. For one thing, it would help me to feel comfortable in whatever new environment I find myself in. Beyond that, my curiosity about people and cultures will help me to come to understand how people in the communities that we serve experience their lives and their challenges - an understanding that will inform my approach to finding engineering solutions.
Early this past summer, my friend Graham gave me a call. He had been thinking of thru-hiking the Long Trail, a 280-mile trail through the mountains of Vermont, and was looking for an adventure partner. I had met various people on hiking trips during my childhood who had completed the Long Trail and similar thru-hikes, and an experience like this struck me as the perfect opportunity to both see what it was all about and get away from the stressful city life in the time of COVID. We meticulously planned the trip, and in mid-July, we started on the trail. We ended up completing the trail in 12 days, averaging more than 22 miles a day. We spent plenty of time pushing ourselves and each other - we often took quick glimpses of outlooks before rushing on to the next peak so as to squeeze every mile out of each day - but some of my most memorable moments from the trip were at night when Graham and I would sit and reflect. We would sometimes talk; we discussed anything from the first meal we would eat at home to our mileage goal for the next day to what books and classes we had most enjoyed from the prior school year. However, just as memorable were the moments where we sat in silence, taking in our surroundings and contemplating our feelings.

At the Global Engineering RAP, I hope to have someone like Graham living down the hall. Based on what I know about the Global Engineering RAP, I think I would have plenty of hallmates who love to talk about ideas and challenge one another the way that Graham and I do. I’m looking forward to those conversations. In addition to connecting over ideas, though, I also hope to have a neighbor who is game for outdoor adventure—who wouldn’t hesitate to ask me to join them on a hike or climb or ski tour. And maybe it’s asking for too much, but on those adventures, I hope this person will talk about all sorts of random topics and, sometimes, sit in silence while we look at the mountains.
It’s an intimidating time to be entering adulthood. Between the global pandemic, chronic inequality, the widening wealth gap in the United States and around the world, and the impending doom of the climate crisis, it’s sometimes tempting to think that no one person can make a difference, so there’s no point in trying. One of the things that attracts me about engineering is that it’s about finding solutions that count. While no individual solution will address any of the massive global challenges that we confront, I am excited to work on solutions that contribute in some small way, and some of which may be scalable to make a meaningful difference. Global Engineering, as a concept, appeals to me because it combines my interest in engineering with my passion for history, politics, and policy. It views engineering not as a purely technical field, but as a way to understand and tackle systemic global inequalities. My sense is that engineering education often does a good job of teaching technical skills, but doesn’t give students a sense of the broader social context in which they are working, so students graduate and take jobs solving problems without a real sense of a broader, big-picture impact of their work. The Global Engineering program fills that void. While I don’t yet know what my own contributions will be, I would love to learn and grow alongside fellow students, and to help find solutions to important problems. The Global Engineering RAP would allow me to do that. On a personal level, I look forward to sharing my interests - from hiking to music to politics - with my neighbors and fellow RAP students, and to building lifelong friendships.
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