Daniel Frantik

Iowa State University

Fall 19

EE 494: General Education Reflection

Here at Iowa State, I got to take many general education courses outside off main electrical
engineer courses. These courses gave me new perspective allow me to understand the world outside of
engineering. These courses showed me what issues people may have and how they would want them to
be solved. These non-engineering course also helped me learn about different perspectives and
backgrounds. Taking myself outside the engineering mindset and allowing to see the world differently.

ECON 101 was my first general education courses I took at Iowa State. It showed me the basics
of how people choose to buy and sell products, why it’s better for people to specialize in producing
certain products and trade them and how government regulates industries to make sure prices are fair.
Going into power engineering I must understand how to sell both power and future power planet
designs. ECON 101 showed me what are people’s needs and wants and how to meet them. This allows
me to sell what work on as an engineer.

I continued with ECON 207 the next semester helping better understand how our economy
works and how to apply better what I learned in in ECON 102. In this course we looked in more of the
math behind our economy and when to buy or sell with that information. Going into the power industry,
this is an important when to turn on and off a power planet when it becomes profitable to send power
to the grid. ECON 207 taught me about future projections and how to determine future needs within the
market. This will help for when to design and build new power planets to meet peoples needs. ECON
207 will be one of my most used general education course that I will use in my career.

One of the most eye and interesting opening course I took here at Iowa State was Religions 205.
In this class, I got to learn about the world religious and their history how they grew and changed
overtime. I got to learn more about the different kinds of Christianity. Being raised catholic, I never fully
understood the difference each church has and why their difference between them. The class also went
to detail of history and modern-day version of Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Learning about
all these religions allows me to understand other people perspectives from all over the world. As an
engineer I need to understand people’s problems and how to solve them. Not everyone I meet will think
like me, but this course will help understand what they may need or help tailor the solutions to meet
their needs.

As an engineer, my main task is solving problems and my main engineering core classes have
taught me how do it, but my general education classes have taught solve the problems for other people.
These classes made change my way at looking at a problem and how to solve them to best help others.
They also helped me to understand other people and their values to help in my career and as a person
grow to take on new challenges and accept different ideas and viewpoints