As a senior in Electrical Engineering, I have taken my fair share of challenging

courses. However, every class I have taken has taught me something different. Not only
in the content presented to me but also in the skills I developed by taking the class. I am
grateful for these courses because they have taught me important skills that I will
continue to use for the rest of my life.
When I first came to Iowa State, my problem-solving skills were good, but they
definitely needed improvement. Most of the classes I took helped improve them, but a
few particular courses really made a difference. That course was CPR E 281 or “Digital
Logic.” For this class, we had a lab related to what we were learning about in our
lectures. While the labs gave you a basic direction to take, you needed to use the
knowledge learned in class and additional resources to complete them. Since this was
the case, I had to be able to search through class notes, along with other external
websites, to find information that would be useful to me.
The problem solving mentioned above should be beneficial in the future. Many
engineering companies have documents or previous examples of things that you can
look through. However, it is not enough to access these documents; one also needs to
know how to find the information they want. In the future, I want to design electrical
systems within large buildings. To do this, I will need to look through many different
documents, including old examples, electrical codes, and notes from architects.
Additionally, there may be times when there are no examples to go off, and I will need
to find the information I need using an external source, something Digital Logic has
prepared me to do.
Another class I have taken is EE 330, also known as “Integrated Electronics.”
Like Digitial logic, I needed to use internal and external resources to solve homework
and labs. However, this class was much more complicated than digital logic, so I could
not always find an answer this way, at least not one that I was confident was correct.
Since this was the case, I needed another source of knowledge; this class taught me
how to ask for help effectively. Specifically, what questions to ask to get an answer I can
understand and effectively implement.
Integrated Electronics was set up to have straightforward access to our teaching
assistants (TA’s). When I took this course, I took advantage of this and asked my TA’s
for assistance whenever I could not come to a conclusion using my resources.
However, the TA’s for my class did not always give clear answers, so I had to learn
what follow-up questions to ask to get some information I could use. Additionally, once I
had this information, I had to be able to use it to solve the rest of the problem, as the
TA’s were not able to give us the answers. These skills will be extremely valuable in the
workforce. Many of my future co-workers will have been in the industry for a long time,
which will make them the perfect resource to ensure I am doing the best possible work I
can.
 All of these skills came together during an internship I had during the summer.
This internship had me doing exactly what I hope to do in the future; design electrical
systems within buildings. During that summer, I was able to use internal and external
resources to complete my work. On top of that, I asked for help a lot. All of my
co-workers were more than happy to answer any questions I had. Additionally, if
someone I asked did not have an answer, they might have known a resource I could
look through to find the answer. Overall, problem-solving helped me have a successful
internship in which I learned a lot a put my problem-solving skills to use.
The problem-solving skills mentioned in this paper are ones that I am grateful to have
learned. That being said, I only hope to improve upon them as I go into the real world.
As I mentioned earlier, there will always be people I work with who will have more
knowledge and experience than me, and I hope to continue to learn from them for the
rest of my life. These are skills that will not only help me in the workforce but also in my
daily life.