General Education Reflection

Throughout my college experience, since the beginning of freshman year, I have been
able to get experience in courses from several different majors. With these experiences I have
really been able to figure out what fields have interested me more than others. Each student at
Iowa State is given a “4 year plan” of sorts to help them figure out how their course plan should
line up with their major. Part of the requirements with these 4 year plans is to branch out from
your major and take general education classes to help broaden your horizons. I have been able to
take a couple of these courses over my college career, but I also was able to get most of my
general elective credits transferred over through post secondary education.
The first general education course I was able to take here at Iowa State was RUS 375.
“Russia Today” is a general education elective offered here that also applies towards your
International Perspectives requirement for graduation. I took this course during the time of the
Pandemic, so the delivery for this course was completely virtual. Throughout this course we
learned many different things about Russian culture and how their country has advanced
throughout the years from the Soviet Union to modern Russia. In particular, one of the people we
learned about was Mikhail Gorbachev and how his ruling led to the destruction of the Berlin wall
and was later awarded the Nobel Peace prize. This was the first class I had taken outside my
major/minor specific course plan, and it provided good insight into the culture of a prevalent
nation.
For my second general education course I took ENGL 346 “American Indian
Literatures”, which applies both as a general education and U.S. diversity credit. I was able to
take this course during my Junior year, and it gave some good perspectives into different Native
tribes and their stories and poetry. In one of the stories we learned about a Native American
baseball team “Miko Kings”, and this story gave many insights into how baseball relates to their
culture and others. This course offered a very unique perspective into the Cherokee Nations and
it helped me empathize and try to understand some of the impacts these nations had.
These were the only two general education electives I was able to take here at Iowa State
and these courses are some of the ones I can and will resonate with for some time. From taking
other courses and being able to learn about perspectives from other cultures, it has helped me to
keep an open mind when learning about new things and seeing how things have evolved.
Through a combination of taking engineering classes and these general education classes it
presented me with opportunities to think critically about some of the situations faced and
possibly how I would envision a different solution. Without taking some of these engineering
courses combined with other perspective classes, I wouldn’t have imagined how differently I
may have perceived something. Overall, I really enjoyed being able to gain some of these new
perspectives through the critical thinking that is developed through these other engineering
courses.