Can someone help me with my LOM? Little time...THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Dear friends I have for the last few days trying desperatly to write a nice letter of motivation for a position in a Masters project in an IT university. Unfortunnely the deadline for getting a mentor in getting closer by the hour but I have yet to catch someone's atention. Can you please give your opinion on this draft, thank you for any help you can give me one this.

Dear Mr…

I am writing you to apply for a position in your project…, at your university, beginning in the fall semester of 2005-2006.
Presently in my last year of studies of a five year degree in Computer Engineering, at , Portugal, I am currently searching for a project in which I can further my knowledge and experience in the field of distributed systems.
My education in computers has been particularly broad by northern European standards, as in Portugal this degree aims to give us a broad understanding of the many fields related to engineering and computers, instead of concentrating in a particular field or topic.
Starting of with the basic courses in engineering, such as Calculus, Probabilities, Statistics, Numeric Analyses and Mechanics, among others, we followed on to cover the various areas related to computer science.
In programming, we learned Assembly, C, Pascal, C++, Java all the way up to Prolog and ML, being educated in the Imperative, Object, Logic and Functional paradigms and spending many hours and days working in projects in all of these to become accustomed and fluent in their use.
With these as a tool, we covered and worked in courses such as Algorithms and Data Structures, Processing Programming Languages, and Formal and Automate Languages. At the same time studying other topics like Circuitry, Architecture, Operating Systems and Networking.
After all this, we proceeded to cover, amongst other topics, Database Systems, Data Warehousing, Data Mining, System Analysis, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics, giving me, as mentioned above, a broad education in this science field.
During the academic year of 2002-2003 I had the privilege of participating in the Erasmus student exchange program, in Finland, where I encountered a completely different academic environment with which I learnt a great deal.
For some time now I have set upon myself the goal of finishing my degree at your university, the technological education centre in Europe. For this I have for the last year and a half worked as a free lancer in a number of projects at an IT consultancy company, both as a consultant and programmer. Besides this I have been able to ascertain myselft academically attaining the highest marks in my degree,(I don't know how to say I'm the best graded student among others in my degree politely, any suggestion?) now at an average of 16 out of 20.
I have dual nationality, Portuguese and British, and I am fluent in both languages, both written and spoken.
As a main interest outside school I have for some time now been addicted to being immersed among other cultures, something that started off in Finland, has now become my main interest as a hobby, backpack traveling. Having spent the last three years traveling thru Asia and Eastern Europe I have learned how other cultures can open our minds and broaden our understanding of others and the surrounding reality.
Thank you very much for taking the time to consider my application. I look forward to your positive response.


Yours sincerely,