From

Mahamat Saddam,

240 East, 175^thSt, Bronx, NY 10457

Februray 5^th,2019.

To
Professor Nancy Clark,
Instructor at City College of New York
160 convent Ave, NY 10031.

Dear Professor Clark,

Allow me to introduce myself, I am Mahamat Saddam, one of your enrolled students for the spring 2019 semester- writing for engineering.

The purpose behind writing this letter is to humbly introduce you to my major, my career goals and dreams in the short and long term. Also, I will talk about the critical role of engineers in facing problems that will arise in the future.

In the next two decades, almost two billion more people are expected to populate the Earth. The world is becoming a place in which high numbers of people, high rates of consumption and more population is increasing. This situation will create an urgent need for food, water, energy, land, transportation and infrastructure. The responsibility of engineers will be higher and critical in fulfilling those demands in both small communities and large urban areas.

As a matter of fact, I was, to some extent, familiar with this problematic situation when I was a high school student. At that time, my interest and curiosity in physics marked the starting point of my ambition for a future career as a civil engineer. Because I was keen on physics and the determination of forces, tension and gravity, I wanted to pursue my dreams using these as tools. 

I am fortunate to have had considerable real-world experience in my field of interest. I worked as a highway construction inspector in N’djamena, Chad, under Comete Engineering Company. Another source of real-world experience occurred in Burkina Faso, under the European-African Company of Industrial Construction (CERI), where I was a technician intern helping to build the biggest cement manufacturing plant in West Africa. 

I view the future as challenging to engineers; therefore, after finishing my bachelor degree in civil engineering at City College of New York, I intend to enroll for the master’s program. Then I will enter the real-world engineering profession to gain experience and actively participate in solving problems of infrastructure. At the same time, I am thinking of lunching my own startups in the field, beginning with my country of origin.

I keep a notebook of original projects I would like to pursue in the future.  There is a saying in my country: “Les problemes poussent à l’innovation” which translates more or less to: “necessity breeds innovation.” Having seen people in my country Chad and throughout Africa suffer from extreme temperatures, I was inspired to start a project that would attempt to solve that problem by finding feasible ways to build houses with better insulation.  This would save energy and lower utility costs by conserving energy effectively within homes.  If this project is successful, it could have far-reaching effects, since almost all of the people in sub-Saharan countries suffer from extreme heat and cold.

Respectfully Yours,

Mahamat Saddam.