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Submission information
Submission Number: 138
Submission ID: 515
Submission UUID: 6039f56d-22d3-4f13-88b5-00dce9d487dc
Created: Mon, 05/31/2021 - 23:44
Completed: Mon, 05/31/2021 - 23:44
Changed: Wed, 05/07/2025 - 21:52
Remote IP address: 71.166.58.215
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English
Is draft: No
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Graham
Snyder
He/Him
Severna Park
Maryland
United States
21146
Open-Ended Engineering
English (5), Chinese (2)
Back in the summer of 2019, I was given an incredible opportunity to travel across to China with my high school Chinese class. Through countless hours spent working in order to fund the trip, including mowing lawns, house work for neighbors, or even using my computer engineering knowledge from high school classes to restore an old, broken MacBook to sell for money, I always looked outside of the box in order to fund the trip.
During the two week trip, we flew to Beijing, and also traveled to some other cities including Xi’an, Chengdu, Shanghai, and a few other smaller cities while passing through the country. Throughout the trip, I was able to expand my Chinese speaking abilities by being able to speak to Chinese citizens, including having conversations about food, or asking for directions. In addition to further developing language skills, I was able to explore Chinese culture and the importance of the different aspects of Chinese traditions. I was able to climb the Great Wall of China, while learning about the history of its creation, or also learned about the history of the Terracotta Warriors, each sculpted individually for an emperor. I also learned about the engineering history of the land, including many of the inventions that took place there, such as the compass and umbrella.
While on train rides during the trip, I often looked out of the window, typically seeing small villages that you would never see in images online, and many that you could tell did not have clean water or electricity. Houses appeared to be just one small wind storm from collapsing, and kids playing outside were covered in dirt, without any access to water or soap to wash off. I was sitting in an air-conditioned train, with water, food, shelter, etc, and just one window pane apart from severe poverty. It was at that moment during the trip that I realized that as I become an engineer in the future, I have the responsibility to work towards a better future for those people who live without the basic needs of living that many of us take for granted everyday.
During the two week trip, we flew to Beijing, and also traveled to some other cities including Xi’an, Chengdu, Shanghai, and a few other smaller cities while passing through the country. Throughout the trip, I was able to expand my Chinese speaking abilities by being able to speak to Chinese citizens, including having conversations about food, or asking for directions. In addition to further developing language skills, I was able to explore Chinese culture and the importance of the different aspects of Chinese traditions. I was able to climb the Great Wall of China, while learning about the history of its creation, or also learned about the history of the Terracotta Warriors, each sculpted individually for an emperor. I also learned about the engineering history of the land, including many of the inventions that took place there, such as the compass and umbrella.
While on train rides during the trip, I often looked out of the window, typically seeing small villages that you would never see in images online, and many that you could tell did not have clean water or electricity. Houses appeared to be just one small wind storm from collapsing, and kids playing outside were covered in dirt, without any access to water or soap to wash off. I was sitting in an air-conditioned train, with water, food, shelter, etc, and just one window pane apart from severe poverty. It was at that moment during the trip that I realized that as I become an engineer in the future, I have the responsibility to work towards a better future for those people who live without the basic needs of living that many of us take for granted everyday.
In the Global Engineering RAP at CU Boulder, I would want to see someone living down the hall from me as a person who embodies a strong commitment towards using their engineering skills for a greater cause. This person acknowledges the need for developing new, innovative solutions to expand access to basic survival needs in areas where that access is currently limited, while also understanding where the inequalities in the needs are failing in the first place. This person also has an open-minded mindset, seeking to hear and value ideas from others, while also possessing the ability to view life from the perspective of others. These traits to me are crucial in global engineering, as I believe that one should be able to possess sympathy for the people they will end up working to help develop solutions for, as you must understand the living situations before developing new solutions.
In addition to those traits, I also see the person living down the hall as someone who can be a leader to connect with others in the Global Engineering RAP. The earth is a very large place, with over seven billion people living in it. There are hundreds of countries, languages, and cultures that all are uniquely different. Because of this, each of us has an individual responsibility to make connections with that specific culture or group that we set out to study with language, such as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, etc, and then connect with other engineers to make meaningful solutions for the people in poverty. The person living down the hall from me may or may not be studying the same language as me, but they can always use their leadership skills to connect with engineers down the hall, like me, to help achieve their projects for other communities.
In addition to those traits, I also see the person living down the hall as someone who can be a leader to connect with others in the Global Engineering RAP. The earth is a very large place, with over seven billion people living in it. There are hundreds of countries, languages, and cultures that all are uniquely different. Because of this, each of us has an individual responsibility to make connections with that specific culture or group that we set out to study with language, such as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, etc, and then connect with other engineers to make meaningful solutions for the people in poverty. The person living down the hall from me may or may not be studying the same language as me, but they can always use their leadership skills to connect with engineers down the hall, like me, to help achieve their projects for other communities.
Being a member of the Global Engineering RAP at CU Boulder means to me being a part of a completely new generation of engineers who will bring new and unique ideas to address and prevent inequalities in the access of basic services and needs. After my trip to China where I witnessed the drastic shift of comfort on one side to severe poverty on the other, all between one window pane of glass, I realized that I had a responsibility to shatter that pane of glass. Not shatter that glass pane by just engineering temporary infrastructure solutions, which often serve as only a temporary patch to poverty, but instead develop solutions that will create a new environment that is designed to thrive in services and wealth, well beyond into the future.
As I will study to become an engineer at CU Boulder, I believe that being a part of this community will allow myself to shift ordinary engineering into a global perspective. Whether that is simply designing a solution to a problem, but then turning it into a global standpoint, thinking about how the manufacturing of the product may impact pollution in that community, or whether the service labor wages are instead contributing to poverty in other regions. As engineers, we will be designers and creators for this next chapter of this earth, and I believe being in this program will shift the focus of engineers like me to this global perspective from the centered focus of the past.
With learning a foreign language, as I continue to learn Chinese in order to become fluent, the Global Engineering RAP will allow me to use the language to establish connections with outside engineers in order to work together on bringing basic living needs to those who need it the most. In addition, within the residential community, I plan to support and work together with my peers with the projects they encounter in the future. We are all in this next generation of engineers together, and unity within the program, whether that means helping each other study and practice our foreign language, being available for emotional support, or simply being best friends with each other, will strengthen our abilities to unify people out in the real world in order to face the world’s toughest poverty challenges, specifically, how do we stop poverty and the lack of survival needs from happening in the first place? In this combined engineering and language program at CU Boulder, I hope to be able to take those next steps into finally answering that question.
As I will study to become an engineer at CU Boulder, I believe that being a part of this community will allow myself to shift ordinary engineering into a global perspective. Whether that is simply designing a solution to a problem, but then turning it into a global standpoint, thinking about how the manufacturing of the product may impact pollution in that community, or whether the service labor wages are instead contributing to poverty in other regions. As engineers, we will be designers and creators for this next chapter of this earth, and I believe being in this program will shift the focus of engineers like me to this global perspective from the centered focus of the past.
With learning a foreign language, as I continue to learn Chinese in order to become fluent, the Global Engineering RAP will allow me to use the language to establish connections with outside engineers in order to work together on bringing basic living needs to those who need it the most. In addition, within the residential community, I plan to support and work together with my peers with the projects they encounter in the future. We are all in this next generation of engineers together, and unity within the program, whether that means helping each other study and practice our foreign language, being available for emotional support, or simply being best friends with each other, will strengthen our abilities to unify people out in the real world in order to face the world’s toughest poverty challenges, specifically, how do we stop poverty and the lack of survival needs from happening in the first place? In this combined engineering and language program at CU Boulder, I hope to be able to take those next steps into finally answering that question.
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