A Reflective Journey: Navigating Your Cumulative

Experience at Iowa State University

During my time at Iowa State University, I have had the opportunity to experience so much

inside and outside the classroom. As my time here comes to an end, I can reflect on how these

experiences have allowed me to grow not only as an engineer, but as a person and professional

as well.

Throughout my time I have been able to take classes that simulated what a real

engineering project would look like. One of these projects that I would like to highlight is an

online dating app that 3 others and I developed. I would like to highlight this project because I

learned a lot from it, not just about app development, but also working in a team, and project

management. The actual development of the app taught us several things. The high-level

overview of an app is an easy design to understand and create on paper, all you need is a front

end to display things to the user, a back-end to store data, and an API that allows the front end

and back end to communicate with each other. The struggle was that most of the members in

our group were relatively inexperienced programmers, so figuring out how to design an app and

implement it. Fortunately, there are a ton of resources that are available online that can go over

how to build an app. This was the first important lesson that I carried with me to my internships

is utilize the internet (in a non-cheating fashion) to find answers to problems. This idea really

helped when it came to debugging the project or sorting out an issue. The one thing I noticed is

that if I ran into an issue, the odds were that 10 other people had the same issue but found a

way to resolve it. Being able to identify what I was confused or stuck on, and then taking the
initiative to try and find an answer by myself before seeking outside help is a skill that benefited

me tremendously during my internships. Another huge part of the class was learning how

engineers work together in a group. The class spent the majority of time teaching different

project management techniques that we would then try out in our groups while we were

working on the project. We specifically learned things like how to divide up work, how to set a

schedule for the tasks, when to hold meetings, how organize the meetings, best communication

practices, ethical practices, etc. Being able to learn about all those concepts and then work with

a team to actually practice these concepts was something that was very helpful because when I

worked on internships, I felt confident that I would be able to successfully work with a team of

engineers knowing that I had already had plenty of exposure to that environment from this

project. Ethics had been covered in plenty of classes throughout my time here, but actually

having to think about making ethical decisions (in our case it was about how to protect users’

personal data) and implementing them in the design was also something that I was fortunate

enough to take to my internships.

Another project I would like to discuss is when I developed a program to scan a pdf list

of students, filter based on class, and output a csv file with the student’s info. This was done for

a student organization on campus so we could recruit members. Because this was a personal

project, I was required to use a whole host of outside resources. This project taught me how to

find resources that will cover basic ideas, like how to scan a pdf, find things like different java

libraries that add functionality that I am looking for, and how to research concepts like using

java to fill out an excel spreadsheet. This allowed me to really develop a project that when I

started, I had no idea what to do. This gave me confidence that I could be a proficient engineer
who can design and implement ideas on my own and gave me a deeper understanding of how

engineers are able to utilize outside resources.

I have also been offered the opportunity to expand my knowledge outside of the

classroom and learn skills that I wouldn’t have been able to learn. The experience I would like to

shine light on is my experience with my fraternity. Through my fraternity I was able to hold

several positions on our executive board. Through these positions I was able to harness a set of

skills that I couldn’t learn in a classroom. I learned how to formulate lesson plans during my

time as fraternity educator, I learned how to work closely with a small group to do things like,

budget, create schedules for each semester, plan events, and give back to the community, how

to run meetings, and I was also able to practice my public speaking each week at our chapter

meeting. I was able to take risks when it came to positions that I held. I would eventually

become president but my decision to run was on a whim. I can say that taking that risk to be

president was the best risk I’ve ever taken as it allowed me to realize the beauty of leadership

and allowed me to discover that I have a passion for it. Without a doubt my experience outside

the classroom at Iowa State has had a huge impact on me, so much so, that I would say it is

equal to what I experienced in the classroom.

Expanding on my presidency I would like to discuss how I was able to pioneer growth

within my fraternity. When I began my term, I knew that we had a lot of good things going for

us, but we weren’t perfect by any means. In order to grow I knew that I needed to identify our

weak spots and work with the executive board to find solutions. My two main goals ended up

being: philanthropy as we really struggled in this area and I wanted to give back to the Ames

community, and scholarship I thought our grades were too low. Once the problems had been
identified we were able to move forward and find solutions, that being we volunteered at a

local soup kitchen, and we implemented a rigorous study hours program. Being able to analyze

what we were struggling with and finding solutions to help really had an impact on me because

it allowed me to apply the same concepts to the things that I was personally doing, whether

that’d be working an internship, or taking a class being able to analyze where I am struggling,

and how can I help myself not struggle.

Looking back at my undergraduate experience, a lot of it I would not change. With that

said I would like to focus on this I would have done differently. The first thing I would have done

differently is learn how to prioritize things right away. There is a lot that goes on in college,

especially if you’re involved in outside activities. Being able to understand what you have to do,

and what things are the most important things to get done will serve anyone well. I would also

get involved with more engineering clubs. This would’ve been beneficial because it would’ve

allowed me to harness my abilities as an engineer, connect with other engineers, and get the

opportunity to do more networking. I would also have liked to do more studying with my peers.

Being able to solve problems and figure things out on your own is great but having the

opportunity to bounce ideas off and learn from your peers is super valuable and something I

should’ve taken advantage of. I also wish I would’ve pushed for more internships when I was a

freshman and sophomore. Being able to get an internship at such a young age would have been

great because of all the things I could’ve learned, but at the time I felt like companies would

want someone more experienced and that I wouldn’t get hired. I now know that’s not the case

so I should’ve pushed harder for internships early on.

Being able to know how to learn is a big skill when it comes to being an engineer. One topic that

I recently had to learn is threads. Threads essentially allow programs to run concurrently (at the

same time) without messing up the resources being used. How I went about learning threads

was first I had to make sure I understood it as a concept. This means reading the textbook, going

to lectures, and asking questions. I also needed to learn how threads actually behaved when

put into use. Fortunately, in this case there were several labs that dealt with threads that gave

me the experience I needed. This illustrates one huge way that I am able to learn new concepts

in engineering is by physically playing with the concept in real life, whether that would be from

a lab or a personal project. I think this approach is effective because understanding a concept in

theory helps me get a start on how to actually use the concept; having to physically mess

around with the concept will really solidify that learning for me.

Building off that in engineering it is necessary to have to take theoretical knowledge of a

subject and apply it to the real world. For example, for one class we were tasked with building

our own bash-like shell to run commands off of. For this project the way to do it correctly was to

fork processes to execute the commands. Forking in theory allows a program to create a

‘duplicate’ of itself so that a program can execute two or more things at once. Having

understood the forking process before the project helped tremendously with my project as it

allowed me to write an efficient program. The part that was difficult is that designing a program

with forked processes can be difficult because the behavior of the program cn be very weird if

done incorrectly. To fix this problem I had be creative with how I used the forked process. The

answer ended up being adding error handling so we know when a process fails, but if I didn’t
have that theoretical knowledge of forked processes before hand I may have struggled with that

solution.

Early in my academic career my study plan was pretty straightforward: read a few pages,

jot down some notes, maybe make some flashcards. As I progressed; however, I found out that

sometimes that isn’t enough. A couple of class types forces me to change my strategy, those

being math and any of my computer engineering classes. In these classes it’s easy enough to

memorize laws and principles but to actually get a deep understanding you may have to put

these laws into practice. For example, the best way to study for a math class is to practice

problems that are similar to the ones on the homework. In my computer engineering classes

the best way to understand how concepts work at a deep level is to go into a lab and mess

around with the concepts. Being able to really utilize the concepts on real-world examples helps

tremendously when it comes to being able to recall that information on a test. What really

drove this change for me was when I had trouble applying concepts that were taught in class on

exams, I knew it was time to start practicing the application side to my study habits.

As I begin my career here in a few months there are a few areas of growth that I would

like to see happen for myself. The first one is I would like to continue to explore all the areas of

software engineering. I have been fortunate enough to have a good variety of internships that

covered completely different areas. I would like to continue to explore more options to see what

I like, and also to learn as much as I can about the field. I would also like to eventually take up a

leadership role. I love to be a leader; I think having a leadership role will allow me to have more

personal connections as opposed to just coding for the rest of my life, and I can continue to

pursue my passion for leadership. I am fortunate to get opportunities to do both through my

Eventually I would like to move into the field of intelligence gathering. I have a passion for

international relations as well and would like to pursue a career that involves that and my

computer engineering degree.

As I reflect on my many experiences at Iowa State University, I honestly can’t believe the

growth that I’ve had between Freshman year and today. Iowa State has offered so many

experiences both in and out of the classroom that served as great learning lessons for me,

especially as I prepare for graduating and entering the workforce. Although there have been

many ups an downs I am truly grateful to have took this journey, and I will take my memories

from it wherever I go.