Civil Engineering Admission, Essay Example

In my high school years, I took a step which would be life changing in my helping the society endeavours. I changed my career dream from becoming a doctor to a civil engineer despite having a good background for pursuing medicine since my father and grandfather are prominent doctors in my community. Since childhood, I witnessed people suffering from various form of disabilities but I did not understand how they ended in that situation till my immediate neighbour became a victim of what is affecting a significant percentage of the society. I come from a bit remote region but the area is economically stable due to abundant resources. Unfortunately, many people have been affected poor construction of buildings which end up falling and killing many family members while others are left with lifetime disability. My immediate neighbour who had constructed a big one-storey mansion lost his wife and children when his house collapsed at night.

The incident was very devastating and it disturbed me for some years. They were like part of my family since I used to spend lot of time there as a toddler. After a while, I did some study of what could be affecting the region and realized that many constructions done in rural or remote areas do not receive approval and those that do, involves lot of shortcuts hence putting the lives of people into danger. The region had very few engineers and all relocated to work in major cities for a better pay and the region is left without experienced professions to play fundamental role like oversight of any project that touches lives of human beings. I wondered what I could do to try and change the situation.

The only way option left was to pursue what will change the lives of people in my community and that is pursuing civil engineering. Helping the society is one of my top priorities and I feel like it’s an innate trait. For instance, I managed at one time to come up with a solution of helping the society and more specifically, an NGO which dealt with HIV positive children. I came up with the idea of crowdfunding which helped the NGO to survive and execute its mandate in the society financially. Back to my engineering story, it’s fortunate that I am very good in mathematics and since high school despite receiving lot of critics from family members and friends; my dream career has been civil engineering. My father was very furious and I felt I had let him down for not pursuing medicine. This is because almost everyone in the family is doing something related to medicine. I felt bad to see my parents not approving the decision and the path I have taken. I tried to convince them but they did not agree. I decided to do something that would prove to them that civil engineering was my dream career despite having a poor overall academic history as afar as engineering is concerned. I had a time during my ninth grade where my grades went down due to a depression which had been caused by a torn ligament. I must admit that the reason behind my dwindling grades became a great motivator in my life. Through constant motivations from my parents and peers I was able to view the other side of life and I emerged a stronger individual having the urge to push forward at all times. Most of the inspiration came from my father who stood with me at all times and from dejection, I have emerged out stronger as an individual who yearns to succeed at all times. This is manifested in my improved grades and ability to solve problems; hence, I intend to get an opportunity where I can have first-hand application of my skills in my everyday work.

Another inspiration which pushed me towards civil engineering and convincing adamant parents is because, at home, there has been issue of water shortage due to poor construction of water system. We used to pump water to the septic tank of 2000 litres every day since there was a leakage and my father spent lot of money inviting plumbers to fix the problem. I looked at the problem and through learnt knowledge of how the system works; I was able to solve the leakage issue. The pipes used had enough pressure to pump the water to our house and therefore no need of using an electric pumping machine. Therefore, Civil engineering competence and skills will help me eradicate some of the common problems affecting the society like poor sewage system, poorly designed buildings and help the government establish modernized infrastructure that serves the current demands of country’s economy. The region has not yet solved some common issue affecting people like poor drainage system which leads to lot of communicable diseases when people take contaminated water.  I believed it time to impact the society in a big way and solve all the issues that are beyond their capability especially poor construction of buildings.