130 Laconia Avenue                                                                                                  Staten Island, New York 10305

September 4^th, 2018

Ms. Susan Delamare

Professor

City College of New York

160 Covent Avenue

New York, New York, 10031

 

Dear Ms. Delamare:

My name is Kareem Baalbaki and I’m a student at City College of New York. I was born and raised in Staten Island, lived my whole life since 9/9/99 (my birth date) in the same house.  My family originates from Lebanon, so as a child jokes would always arise when I told people where I’m from, I would say “I’m Lebanese” and 90% of the time they would reply “You’re lesbian” or when I tell them my name is Kareem they would always reply “cream? like cream cheese”, but my name became a great introduction when I met new people, “my name is Kareem like cream cheese”. My child hood went well even though my parents are very strict. My dad is a hard worker so of course that’s what he wants for his kids. He used to work for the MTA and he would take me to different bridges and buildings he designed and I took an interest.

 

I am now attending CCNY to receive a degree in Civil Engineering. Civil Engineering is broken into three categories Transportation Engineers, Environmental Engineers, and Structural Engineers. My focus will be structural engineering, I’ve been fascinated by buildings and how they work since being introduced to them by my father, so how better to understand how they work then to learn about the structure of them?

There are other reasons for why I’ve chosen structural over other Engineering majors. There are a variety of engineers that deal with buildings, but my father is a Civil Engineer and although he used to work for the MTA he now has his own Engineering company. I’ve been working with him for the past 3 years and within these 3 years I was taught different kinds of engineering like mechanical and electrical and even architecture, it’s not an engineering type but it has a lot to do with buildings. The only type of engineering I could not be taught by my coworkers and bosses is civil because to be able to grasp a proper understanding of structural engineering you need to understand the fundamentals that are taught in college. Once I graduate with my civil engineering degree and receive my Professional license my father will retire, and I will take over his company.

Civil Engineering is one of the first engineering’s to ever be created. Anyone who put a roof over their head has used a type of civil engineering although the name might have not been invented at the time the concept was there. It’s been with us for so long and will be here for years to come. The way technology has been advancing, there have been creations of various applications that can do a lot of the calculations and test that are required to approve the structure of a building. I work with two structural engineers, one of them is old school and does a lot of hand drawings, the other is more up to date with computers and these applications. The old school engineer is more experienced and is very well at what he does, this has me believe there’s just some things applications can’t do and that’s why civil engineers will never be replaced by computers.

There are a numerous amount of things I can accomplish with my civil engineering degree, but my main goal is to take over my father business so he can retire and expand it. I have done some architectural designs for some buildings but being able to completely design a building by myself will be amazing. This dream of mine is close and I know if I keep working hard towards my goal it will become my reality.

Sincerely,

Kareem Baalbaki