“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.
.JPG)
