Andrew Jacobson

EE 494

Spring 2021

Cumulative Reflection

I started my time as a student here at Iowa State in fall of 2016 with little to no engineering

experience in high school. At the time I have only taken a few drafting classes and competed in

an architecture competition in high school. With such little experience I was really unsure what

to expect, and felt out of place as it seemed everyone I talked to who was also going into

electrical engineering had already done some circuit project or had prior knowledge on the

subjects. I decided to pursue electrical engineering without any real reason outside of a little

interest in how electricity worked. In reality, I wanted to challenge myself with a major that

would be difficult for me and help me find a passion for something new. Upon entering some of

my first classes such as EE 185 and EE 201, I realized that I found the topics being covered to be

interesting and I decided to continue my studies in electrical engineering.

Throughout my first year I never ran into much trouble with any of my classes, but that

changed with EE 224 in the spring of 2018. In this class, I had a very hard time understanding

the topics and ended up getting the lowest score in the class on the first exam. I was very upset

with myself and started studying with others in my class and would attend every office hour,

often being the only student there. For the second exam, I got the highest score in the class and

got an A on the final. I bring up this example because I feel like it perfectly shows my ability to

problem solve when faced with under exciting expectations. I used every resource available to

me to really understand the topics of the course and understand the applications of the topics that
were presented in the course. By doing this I learned to not only rely on myself but seek help

from the people and resources around to help aid my learning process.

Moving on to discussing a project, I will talk the final project in EE 330. For this project, I

was tasked with designing an IC to do calculations such as addition, subtraction, integration and

differentials. In reality I had no idea how to do any of this, so I met with the TA for the class and

decided to use an operational amplifier to create some of the arithmetic circuits I learned about in

EE 230. By doing this I learned about operational amplifier design by reviewing the lecture

slides from EE 435, a class that I am currently in. By doing this I learned the basics of designing

an operational amplifier and began working on my project. By the end of it, my operational

amplifier design did not work. As stated earlier, I am currently in EE 435, this is because I

wanted to understand my mistakes and learn how to properly do this project. In this class I have

learned about the design process of operational amplifiers and was able to successfully create

one myself. At some point, I plan on going back and fixing my mistakes and completing the

project to its intended purpose.

One of my biggest regrets at Iowa State was never getting involved with extra-curricular

activities relating to my field of study as they will help me apply what I am learning in class to a

real-world setting. I initially started out collage joining the solar car team. At first, I thought it

would be something I would be interested in, but that soon changed. I found myself feeling

useless as I was unable to really do anything for the club as it felt like the older members did

everything and only left basic tasks such as soldering and basic wiring. I soon left he quit the

club and never joined another to focus on my schoolwork and pursuing leadership roles in my

fraternity. I do not regret leaving the solar car team, but I regret not joining another technical
club as I feel like I do not have the proper experience in applying my engineering knowledge

when looking for full time employment.

In the fall of 2019, I was able to find my first and only real work experience in electrical

engineering, a co-op with national carwash solutions. This co-op really did not have my learn

under a current employee, but instead had me working on my own projects and I was treated as a

full-time employee. This was one of the best experiences I had as a college student because I was

able to apply what I had been learning in the classroom to a real word environment. Looking

back at this experience, I feel as though I learned more during that semester than any other

semester because I had to work with others on large scale projects and on understanding what

they have done before I stated working on the projects. To me I found it interesting to be using

topics I learned in classes such as circuit design and interrupts when working on projects.

When looking back at my five years at Iowa State, all I can say is that I really learned more

than just the topics from classes. I learned about how to become a better student, how to take

what I have learned in my classes into applying it into projects, and how to improve myself as

not just a student but a person who is about the enter the workforce.