My Dream Job

“What do you want to be when growing up?” is a question commonly asked by parents to their children when their children are young, and this question was also asked by my dad when I was eight years old. However, as a young boy, I just told him what I had heard of. “I want to be a governor,” I told him. However, as I grow up, and have witnessed different life-challenging events people in my country are facing, together with knowledge accumulated from everyday both-on-and-off-campus life, I have found a way to realize my true passion. I want to be a rural engineer (infrastructure, water resource, and environmental engineer), an engineer who plays a pivotal role in transforming people’s way of life from nature-dependent to practical, real-world problem-solving minded, and whose purpose is to trace the root of the environmental, infrastructural, and water-resource related challenges that affects the livelihood and well being of the people.

If asked why I choose this major and how I will do to attain my goal, I will definitely have to say that it may take days to describe in words. However, briefly speaking, the reason is that I see the potential of the role of this major playing in introducing a change to the country, a change for the better for all of the citizens. So far, Cambodian people have been suffering nonstop, aside from political conflict that stirred up the country in the past few decades, from poverty stricken conditions and sanitation problems. Farmers are left to do farming without a clear idea what it will turn out to be at the end of the harvest season. They don’t know whether they will have enough water to irrigate their farms during the hot period, best described as a drought if serious, and whether there will be too much water resulted from rainstorm or flood events. Often times, Cambodian peasants face with this issue, and this is amongst factors leading to poverty. Regarding to sanitation issues, the accessibility to safe drinking water is still limited, especially for people is rural and remote rural areas, the management of sewage wastewater still is bad and ineffective, and the disposal of waste into the natural environment still is done without proper treatment and regulation.

Taking a major as a rural engineering, I have begun my first step towards my dream. The opportunities to travel outside of the country to fetch new ideas, experiences, and techniques from foreign countries have pushed me another step further closer to my dream. And I will try my best to absorb as much knowledge as possible so that I will be able to translate my dream into a reality. 

My dream job is a job which can help build a descent society in which the less privileged receive equal opportunity as citizens of the country.