Cristiam Cruz
853 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10032
January 29, 2025
Ms. Julianne Davidow
Adjunct Lecturer, English Department
City College of New York
160 Convent Avenue
New York, NY 10031
Dear Ms. Davidow,
I’m writing to introduce myself and give you an idea of my background and interests. This is my third semester at City College, and I’m looking forward to learning as much as I can about how engineers write documents. I know we require a different writing style, and with this class, I want to learn and improve those skills because they could help me with more professional ways of writing.
I was born in the Dominican Republic. I speak both English and Spanish, but my mother tongue is Spanish. My family is from the Dominican Republic as well. My country has a rich culture with a lot of history part of our culture can dance, like merengue or bachata, food like Mangu(like mashed plantains), Sancocho(like a soup) or Habichuela con dulce(a dessert made with beans) that I don’t particularly but is an important the Dominican traditions like Semana Santa that is a seven-day catholic tradition.
The major I’m planning to do is computer engineering. I chose to be a computer engineer because, since I was younger, I have always loved video and technology, and they have been a big part of my life, which gave me the motivation to major in something that would let me create my video games or tech that could make progress in the world. Some issues I want to try to solve in the future can be making computers more powerful and with fewer limitations, other cybersecurity protecting people’s personal information from hackers or scammers, and making technology more efficient to prevent accidents like software crashes in crucial places like airlines or hospitals.
One struggle I encountered in my life was the language barrier. As an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, when I first came to the United States I struggled a lot in school, especially in middle school even though it was a bilingual school almost everyone spoke fluent English either because they had lived in the country for a long time or they were born here and have immigrant parents, this makes me feel a little left out because when they start speaking in English I understood almost nothing they were saying and cut me out of a lot of conversations because I couldn’t engage on them. I overcame this barrier by learning English with the help of my ESL classes to improve my writing and speaking in English.
Something that I consider a success in my life is when I graduated from middle school, which is not the most important thing that has happened in my life, but is one of the moments that has shaped my way of acting in academic terms. In middle school, since the first year, my teachers always told me that I was not ready to move to the next grade because I didn’t do as well as others in classes like math, but they didn’t help me improve either, it was a weird situation, and it escalated to the point of making a meeting with my mom to try to convince her to sign a paper to make me fail the school year, not because I didn’t have good grades but because they though I didn’t have the level to pass, luckily for me my mon denied it and I pass to the next grade and give me the motivation to prove them wrong and I did because I graduate, that is not much but in my eyes, it was a success and also a meaningful experience because not only change my way of acting on school but also because it makes me see the trust my mon have on me because even if the teachers tell her to hold me down a year she didn’t and trust that I could improve on school and make her proud.
In this class, I hope to learn how to write in engineering terms, which means that when I write documents, emails, or any important literature piece in my future job or to other companies, they can read it and know that I know what I’m doing and have a good level of writing. At the end of the semester, I want to take all the skills I learn and remember them for all the writing work I do in the future as an engineer. Learning how to write and speak is important in my future career because, as an engineer, we have to do a lot of writing reports, research papers, and proposals that need to be clear and accurate to have success. As engineers, we also have to work with a team of people, so having a good way of speaking is important to communicate well with them.
Something about me is that I’m a student who is always ready to learn new things and doesn’t take criticism as something bad I encourage you to tell me where I’m lacking in my writing because that helps me to improve a lot and make my work better and more at the level of the class. Another thing is that I’m shy, but I’m willing to participate if needed, and even if I don’t like it, I’m good at working on teams and always finish my part of the projects or assignments.
Sincerely, Cristiam
Cristiam Cruz
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