General Education Reflection

My short term goals are to graduate college and have a job lined up upon graduation. I want to
work in a technical engineering field for 2-3 years before going back to school to get an MB. !aving
an MB will allow me to better prepare myself for attaining a managerial position with the company
that I will be working for. "ventually I want to be working overseas with people and culture different
from what I#ve e$perienced here in the %nited &tates my entire life.
My time at Iowa &tate has been great for developing my mind for engineering work' and many
of the general education classes I took helped in this. I took an economics class so that I would have a
basic knowledge of the economy. (his has helped just in my everyday thinking about materials and
costs when building something for an engineering project. )or the remainder of my general education
credits I have taken courses in *inguistics. (hese linguistics courses I have taken have truly helped me
escape a purely engineering mindset. &ometimes being surrounded so entirely with engineering
coursework can get overwhelming and even hinder my progress. *inguistics became not only a hobby'
but an escape for my brain to rela$ and focus on something that I really enjoy that may be a little less
+technical,. (hrough these linguistics courses I actually was able to make a lot of connections between
language and computers. Many similarities arose and it became apparent that the two fields weren#t too
separate from each other after all. I ended up getting an undergraduate research position my sophomore
year with a linguistics professor and began working on studying how computers interpret language.
(his e$perience with computational linguistics has allowed me to see many more applications
of engineering principles outside of an engineering field. Many of my skills with computers carried
over to my linguistics work as we were programming in -erl' .ava' and -ython. /e were also working
with &0Ms 1&upport 0ector Machines2' which are basically machine learning platforms for computers
to learn from themselves. (his work has great impact and two projects that I have worked on have been
able to help many people already. 3ne was focused on improving discourse in research writing by
having a computer automatically assess and provide feedback on a user#s research paper. (he other
project focuses on providing language feedback to non-english speakers on their writing. (he goal is to
help improve student#s writing in "nglish 454 classes at Iowa &tate with dynamic feedback generation.
Cumulative Reflection
6umulative 7eflection8
My time at Iowa &tate has taught me a lot of things. lot of the classes I have taken have
focused heavily on the design process. (his is especially useful because it provides me the necessary
skills to use in industry. I#ve had two internships and from everything I see' these design skills will
come in very handy. I also think I&% has prepared me very well to function in a diverse workplace. I
have worked on many teams in my time here at I&% and some of the teams are diverse in cultural
background while others have been diverse in thought and action. (his e$perience will also carry over
well into the work5force because people are so complicated and everyone is different. (he skills I have
developed getting along well in diverse situations will definitely help out in my future.
lot of the projects that I have been assigned through courses at I&% have re9uired a lot of
e$tra' outside learning in order to complete. I have actually multiple times met with students who have
a wider knowledge than I do in a certain area to give me some pointers. nd probably most fre9uently
use the internet for research of topics. I have learned that I am going to have to constantly be having to
fend for myself and learn new practices and software and coding languages as a computer engineer in
industry and I feel 9uite well prepared for that.
I participated in a few activities outside of the classroom' but the fact that I was working 25
hours a week while in school ate into a lot of my free time. (he organi:ation that I did put the most
time into was the &alt 6ompany. 6hristian ministry-based organi:ation and one that is completely
separate from engineering. I had the opportunity to be a leader within this organi:ation and lead weekly
bible studies with people who eventually became really great friends. I worked an entire year in the
I&% )oundation -hone 6enter raising money and honing people skills. (o be entirely honest' that was
probably my least favorite job that I#ve ever had and I dreaded going into work every day' but I stuck it
out' past the three month mark that less than ;5< of people last through. It taught me perseverance and
many many people skills as the entirety of the job was trying to weasel money from people to help the
university. (he following semester I got offered a new job and then proceeded to become an
undergraduate research assistant in computational linguistics. (his research opportunity has been the
best opportunity of my entire time at Iowa &tate as it has actually given me a real-life assignment to
work on and a product to be pushing forward. (he e$periences I have had from working as an
undergraduate assistant have been uncountable. (he job has re9uired that I do a ton of outside learning
and actually learn 9uit ea bit about linguistics. It also grew a passion in me for linguistics and has even
been strong enough that I have the desire to get a masters degree in my future.
If I were to do my undergraduate work over again' the one thing that I would do different is to
work less so that I could enjoy my time more. (ruthfully' I did not have the easiest go at university
because I was constantly bogged down with course-work' projects and work responsibilities. (his
greatly hindered my social life to the point where that is my biggest regret. I do feel highly prepared to
be an engineer in industry though' so that is what really matters.