Submission Number: 265
Submission ID: 971
Submission UUID: 86268377-dcb6-4af3-8575-58a04df33da0

Created: Fri, 04/15/2022 - 18:03
Completed: Fri, 04/15/2022 - 18:03
Changed: Tue, 05/06/2025 - 07:04

Remote IP address: 2601:281:cc80:b350:98c1:b815:a729:26b4
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Flagged: Yes
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Isabel
Morin
They/Them
Colorado Springs
CO
United States
80906
Aerospace Engineering
English (5), German (1-2), French (speaking 1, reading 1-2), Spanish (1)
My father's company, EM Microelectronic, has two main offices—one in the US and one in Switzerland. He has worked for this company for over a decade and most of the people in his business unit live and work overseas. Thanks to the global nature of his job, I have grown up with considerable exposure to other countries and cultures. We would host dinner for overseas guests on business trips who mostly do not have English as their primary language, and I was fortunate to live in Switzerland for eight months when I was 8 years old. During that time, I attended an international Montessori primary school where classes were taught in French and English, with language lessons in German. We lived in Switzerland again for two months when I was 11 years old. During these experiences, I met families that were Italian, French, German, Iranian, Portuguese, and Spanish, and my best friend during our first visit was from Poland. On a personal level, these experiences have taught me that families across the globe have more similarities than differences.
Over the past three summers, I have held an engineering intern position at my father's office and have communicated and worked with engineers in Switzerland and Prague. I’ve learned to work around time zone differences and—occasionally—translational difficulties. On a professional level, these experiences have shown me that it is important to work with people who have a different culture, viewpoint, and education and that professional collaboration will become more and more international. I have loved all of these experiences so much that it has been my dream for some time to engage with engineering on a global scale and work for companies that are not strictly US-based.
Because of this, I have spent time out of my school Spanish and German to work on other languages in Duolingo such as French (to keep in practice from my time in Switzerland) and Russian (a lot of aerospace requires communication with Russians, particularly with the ISS); while the Russian’s actions in Ukraine have been horrific, it does not change the international capacity of the ISS and the space industry at large, which would make speaking and understanding Russian an advantage when working in the space industry. My experience with Russian is not enough to consider myself at even an elementary level, and I’m anxious to improve my skills.
I’d like to live down the hall from someone who is enthusiastic about learning and working collaboratively with others, not only with engineering but with learning about other cultures and approaches to engineering. I have worked with enough international engineers to know that every culture has a different way of tackling problems. I would want the person who lives down the hall from me to be open to different ways of approaching problems and working in an environment that may not be what they are used to. I would want the person to be hardworking and get good grades, but also willing to participate in the community and make the world a better place, someone who participates in volunteering and is willing to help other students. I would want someone who is kind and respectful and accepting, but not afraid to set firm boundaries. I would want someone who makes mistakes and fixes them, someone who is always trying to make themselves better but doesn't have to be perfect in order to be happy. I would want someone who is willing to talk to others in the Global Engineering RAP in a different language not because they have to, but for good old-fashioned practice, and who listens to music in other languages and genuinely knows the words and sings along. I would want someone who is willing to work with others across engineering disciplines for the experience. I would want someone who is curious about the world and learns for the sake of learning.
The world is a very big place, with a lot of cultures and languages and people. I would hope the people in the Global Engineering RAP would be just as excited about going into the world and exploring all of the amazing opportunities as I am, and who are just as driven to change the world for the better. I want to walk down the hallway and hear people chatting in different languages about different projects and cultures and I want to hear the Duolingo "bing" echoing through the hallways. I want to live with people who don't see themselves as the world, but rather as part of the world, and who are ready to go out and make the world a better place.
I want to be part of a community that wants to use engineering skills to interact with and improve the world. The world beyond our national borders and social barriers. I want to work with others to create a welcoming and diverse international community. I would like to participate in the Global Engineering RAP at CU Boulder so that I can meet others who have this same desire: a group of students who want to study other languages and cultures while also pursuing a career in engineering, people who can see the global impact we can have as engineers.
I believe working in such an environment will help all of the members of the dorm to become excellent engineers as we build a community where we can bounce ideas off of each other, collaborate on projects, and form study groups for both engineering across disciplines while learning about world cultures and languages. I am excited to work with others who are learning other languages so that we can help each other reach 4's (professional proficiency) and 5's (bilingual) by living and working and studying together. Having all had different international experiences, we can all help each other build toward future careers. For example, I have valuable experience working with people in several European countries and know effective ways of communicating with them. Having studied several languages (German and Spanish in a class setting at high school; French and German in a very immersive way by living in Switzerland for 8 months at 8 years old and 2 months at 11 years old; and French, German, Russian, Spanish, and many others on Duolingo), I know many effective ways to learn languages and how to best learn about cultures and peoples, and I particularly love the cultural engagement that comes from learning a language. The words that don’t translate and the different idioms all bring a beauty and fluidity to each language.
I think a community of people working together to learn about engineering and international cultures will help all of us continue to pursue our dreams and encourage us to be better people by engaging with the global network of engineers, seeing how other people work and live, while understanding our similarities and differences
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