My name is Azeam Anjum. I come from a close family. As a family of four kids
two older brothers and older sister and then I came along at some point. but
we're great. My father was an engineer just like me and he worked at several
power plants helping to maintain and construct them.
I work at Sargent and Lundy. They are a power plant design firm. At Sergeant
and Lundy, I am a mechanical engineer so I designed the mechanicals piping
systems. This includes the pumping systems, the turbine systems, the heat
recovery system., Have just like some smaller blueprints as well just like
these. So typically I would work on developing the 2d diagrams of the
powerplant what connects to what and then the mechanical designers would draw
that in 3d and I would help review and develop that and then we would
eventually want to take all of this and make it into a construction package. I
actually didn't always want to be an engineer. In high school, just like
everybody else I didn't know what I wanted to do and I took some physics
classes and I really enjoyed them and then engineering is the application of
physics so I thought that would be a good route to go down and CoD was a
good way to test that being a two-year school I was able to basically see if
that was a good path for me without you know taking a major risk. My experience
at CoD was great and initially I was going to pursue a different university
but I decided to give them a chance and they blew my expectations away. They had
a full blown engineering program. It was rather maturely developed at the
time and it's gotten better so I was able to take all the classes I needed to
complete my freshman and sophomore year level of engineering. After CoD, I went
to the University of Illinois at Chicago where I completed my final two years of
my bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. College of DuPage gave me a
strong base to start UIC with. I often felt that I knew the
content better than my peers who were at UIC already. The reason being is that the
engineering department at College of DuPage had teachers that gave students
individual attention and actually made sure that the students learned the
content rather than the large lecture halls where sometimes those things are
lost in the details. What gets me excited about my work is when I think about the
scale of it. So oftentimes I may be writing an equipment specification so
just like a word document or I might be drawing I guess 2d CAD drawings and
those are lines and triangles and shapes but then when you think about what
you're actually doing you're taking baby steps to construct something so big,
something so vast that'll be producing energy for so many
people it you start to think of it as a privilege. It's not many people get to do
something at that scale if I did not go to College of Dupage I
feel that I would I would still be on the same career track but I would be a
little behind. At College of Dupage, they gave me opportunities to pursue
internships that gave me a step forward. Each internship was a step forward in my
career and it's because of these opportunities that I met the position I
am today and now I'm looking towards the future. I
will be married this year. I also hope to move further in my career and work on
some of the new generation power plants and the new fossil project as well