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Milan Patel
Instructor: Moore
EE 494
8 October 2016
General Education Reflection
General education was something a once naive version of myself thought he
did not need. I thought of it as a waste of time and money. I am here to learn how to
be an engineer; not learn about history, economics, etc. As I ventured down my
academic career path, it soon dawned upon me how valuable the experiences I was
gaining from the diverse credit load that had been required of me.
Coming into Iowa State University, I had brought some general education
credits along with me. Already having taken Introduction to Psychology & Sociology,
and Composition I & II; my general education requirements had been cut down. That
being said, even though I had transferred the credits into my degree plan, the
knowledge and the connections I built upon the knowledge didnt come until further
down the road.
My first semester I choose to take Introduction to Microeconomics to continue
to chip away at my credit load. At this stage, I was still in that nave mindset that I
alluded to earlier. I simply went to class and absorbed the material. I didnt take it
upon myself to see how the education I was receiving could be applied to the world
of engineering. In all fairness to myself, there was no way for me to be able to apply
that knowledge since I had no engineering background at the time. In subsequent
semesters, I added History of African Americans and World Food Issues to round out
my palette. Again, the story repeats itself in that, at the time, I was simply sitting in
class and absorbing the material. As hindsight tends to be 20/20, I eventually
reflected upon my experiences in all general education adventures and could make
connections in everything from circuits to ethics.
In Microeconomics, the obvious connections came from the actual business side of
engineering. Every circuit/device I will work on as an engineer will have a purpose.
And 9 times out of 10 that main purpose is going to be to make money. In a
workplace setting, I am most likely not going to have absolute control; I will have
certain restrictions and expectations to follow. To excel in my work field, I need to
know what the supply and demand of the device I would be working on is; as that
may influence a design. Additionally, I could apply the law of diminishing returns to
cap the number of RC components in my low-pass filter so that my device optimizes
profit and effectiveness, for instance.
In both World Food Issues & History of African Americans, I can relate to ethics.
Although engineers are not to blame for the African American lineage, it still shows
how that humanity still needs to prevail over business. That to me is a core idea of
ethics. For instance, the well-known VW incident. They chose to choose profits over
the long-term health of our planet, and now they are paying the price (hopefully).

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Similarly, World Food Issues showed me the impact on the world today through the
application of science and engineering. Again, the same ideas resonate as to greed
should not overcome our need to help our fellow man. One case we discussed in
this class was the scenario with Monsanto and their prized GMO seeds. In a nutshell,
Monsanto was able to create a miniature monopoly and, in some cases, abuse that
power to take advantage of farmers and consumers to maximize profit. And this
reason is one of the many reasons as to why people are hesitant to try GMO
products today.
Lastly, Introduction to Psychology & Sociology have appeared in my present state of
mind as my team & I attempt to complete our Capstone Design. Specifically, in the
graphical user interface (GUI) and ease of use. Even though our team is months
away from having a finished product; we have briefly discussed what we want from
our device. These include, but are not limited to, color schemes & layout of the web
application, and ease of use. Unknowingly, we are applying the ideas of Cognitive
Psychology to analyze what colors a human being prefers to see when navigating
our app. Similarly, we need to have the app/device be as simple to use as possible
as to negatively impact a users workload. These are ideas that any design team in
a workplace setting would have to consider.
All in all, general education has turned out to be one of my favorite experiences at
Iowa State. Not only for the practical knowledge it has bestowed upon be to allow
myself to become a well-rounded engineer, but it has also been a welcome break
from the technical calculations I was doing in just about every other class.
The knowledge obtained from my experiences has helped shaped what I want in a
workplace. That is, I hope to land a job in the long-term that is challenging
technically, but also has a strong human element. In the short-term, I have acquired
a job with the United States Navy for the next five years. This is a job that I know
will be challenging and hope that through travel and through my fellow sailors will
provide a welcome human element.