Christopher Marting

Iowa State University

SP22

EE 494: Cumulative Reflection

When I first started my freshman year of college at Iowa State in fall 2017, I originally

wasn’t an Electrical Engineering major. I started as a Computer Science major. When I was in

high school, I took a couple of coding classes and thought with utmost confidence that this was

what I wanted to do, but I quickly realized that was not the case. At the end of my first year here

at Iowa State, I decided that I would change my major. My roommate at the time was an

Electrical Engineering student, and the stuff that I saw him doing on a regular basis seemed

quite intriguing to me, so when I went around to talk to the different advisors for the engineering

department to decide which specific area I wanted to study, the one that stuck out to me the

most ended up being Electrical Engineering. The following semester one of the first courses I

took as an Electrical Engineering major was EE 185 with Dr. Mani Mina. EE 185 is the first-ever

course you will have to take if you are an electrical engineering major here at Iowa State, and it

teaches the importance of design thinking and solving engineering problems. Design thinking

was something that I had never done nor considered before as I always just learned what was

being taught and didn’t think much else of it, but that course gave me a great understanding of

what it is and how to best utilize it to solve engineering problems.

As a senior in electrical engineering here at the prestigious Iowa State, I have the

amazing opportunity to work on a big project with students I may or may not know and a faculty

advisor/client. Through the senior design class, I have been given the opportunity to learn on a

much larger scale how to effectively work with a larger group of people and keep everyone on

task with the project. The senior design class has given me a lot of insight into what professional

responsibilities I will have when I end up going to work for a large company.

As you continue as an electrical engineering student, you are bound to run into

difficulties. It is necessary to get outside resources when you are working on something as big
 Christopher Marting
Iowa State University
SP22
as a project or as little as a homework assignment. As I have gotten further into the program as

an electrical engineer, I have had to do whatever it takes to be successful. Whether it be reading

the book, getting a tutor, going to see the professor or TA, all of which I have done before. I do

not believe that I would have made it as far as I have as an engineering student if it weren't for

all of these resources you get as a student here.

One regret I do have that I have never tried to do here during my time at Iowa State was

to go out and see if there were any clubs or groups that I felt at home with to join to further enjoy

my time here. I do think that it would have been quite nice to have a good network of people that

I knew and could go to for whatever I needed, but at the same time, as I have been progressing

and you start to specialize in certain areas for study I have slowly started to build that

connection with people. I have never been that outgoing or wanted to step out of my comfort

zone, which is why I didn't look into those things, but now I definitely regret not doing so

because of the connections I have been able to make now.

As my time here at Iowa State comes to an end, I start to reflect on my college years. If I

could go back in time, I would tell myself to really think about whether computer science was

really what I wanted to do. In reality, that was a total waste of a year that I didn’t enjoy and

would’ve much rather enjoyed if I was taking electrical engineering courses. At the same time,

those experiences I had have ended up being quite useful as I’ve gone on as an electrical

engineer. College is truly an amazing journey where we get to learn a lot about ourselves and

make life long connections along the way, but to top it all off, it's the time when we get to learn

one of the most important tools in life, and that's the ability to learn as effectively and efficiently

as we can.