When looking back on my adventure here at Iowa State University, I can see the

growth I have experienced over the last four years. Coming into college, I was a “good”

student with good grades. What I didn’t realize was just how much I still needed to learn

to be ready for my career. ISU has offered me countless opportunities to ready myself

for the future.

Coming out of high school, I didn’t have the best work ethic because I didn’t need

it. I did all of my homework and I got good grades on the test without significant

studying. This continued until my first test at college. I didn’t do as well as I would have

liked on that test. I put a lot more time into studying for all of my tests after that. I figured

out that I needed to invest time in learning the best way to be successful. I decided to

take action by taking the Academic Learning Skills class. This class had no direct

impact on my degree, but this class helped me develop time management, test

preparation, and note-taking skills. These are skills I have utilized in all of my learning,

both, in and out of classes. However, for some of my more difficult classes, these skills

weren’t quite enough. I had to take more action. The action I decided to take was

visiting my professors to ask for a deeper explanation. I have asked the professor of the

class questions along with other professors I thought would have insight on the subject.

This action has gotten me used to asking for further information, a skill I used often at

my internship.

ISU has also helped me learn many skills that will be very important moving

forward. During my senior year, I got the chance to demonstrate the different skills I

have acquired throughout college. For example, I have taken on many different

engineering problems through my internship and my design-based classes, like EE 333

and senior design. An engineering problem that I was tasked with solving was to design

a sonic switching circuit that would control an LED string. When making a circuit of any

kind I fall back on the “tool-bag” I got freshman year. This tool-bag holds methods to

understand circuits. These methods help me to understand how the electricity should be

moving through the circuit. These tools helped when working through logic concepts for

the circuit. I also applied my experience with the oscilloscope to watch as the signal

went through the circuit and adjust it to do what I wanted. This is a skill that I developed

a lot in my internship the summer of 2018. That summer, I assisted in assembling a

lightning surge generator. One of the final steps of this project was tuning the output

and how it was affected by a small inductor.

During my internship in 2019, I was tasked with designing a PCB. This PCB is

meant to perform multiple tests on a LED driver. To complete this project, I had to tap

into some common circuits that I have learned about in many different classes. Some of

these circuits includes differential amplifiers, transimpedance amplifiers, and buffers. I

combined these circuits with components I picked out. In testing these circuits, I used

techniques that I learned in EE 201 and EE 230.

In conclusion, my time here has offered me so many ways to improve my

learning ability. I have done my best to take advantage of some of these opportunities

and I plan to take these skills into my future career. There is an opportunity to learn in

every situation and thanks to my time here I have a great chance to expand my learning

through everything I do.