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Reflective Journey: Navigating Your Cumulative Experience at

Iowa State University

The college experience has blown me away from being a freshman in the dorms to

having a full-time job lined up after graduation. When starting college, I was blessed (mostly

cursed) with having the COVID-19 experience. It felt like I was locked in my dorm with a

random roommate I just met and expected to live there and do online classes for a year. This was

a challenging time, but it enabled me to find myself along the way.

I learned what I wanted to do as an undecided engineer and what path to follow; after

carefully thinking, I decided to go into electrical engineering. I chose electrical engineering

because of how broad of a major it was, I could work on and do anything with this major since

they are in such significant demand. My ultimate goal for this major was to work on sustainable

energy, better battery storage/use, or aerospace. After taking a sustainability class at Iowa State, I

saw the potential for using the earth's resources healthfully to allow us to have energy. But we

are going to make more possibilities for sustainable energy. In that case, we also need a better

way to store energy in bigger amounts and for a longer period of time. After taking my EE 456

power class taught me how much energy we have and how much of it goes to waste since there is

no way to store it all. Finally, I have always wanted to do something with aerospace, I was

debating on going into aerospace engineering or electrical engineering as a freshman but decided

to go with electrical because I would be promised a job out of college with an electrical

engineering degree.
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While deciding to be an electrical engineer, I also leaped to join a fraternity. I came into

college not wanting to touch anything Greek life because of the incidents on the news that year.

But than an Engineering fraternity, Triangle Fraternity, reached out to me to lunch with them and

learn about the fraternity. I went and instantly fell in love with the fraternity. I was initiated into a

chapter of 32 men. I chose this fraternity because we were all similar majors and had

like-minded goals for college; if anyone was struggling with a class, you could knock on any

door and ask for help. After being initiated, I instantly ran for recruitment chair to help recruit

over the summer; after that summer and fall, I ran for Vice President of Recruitment and finished

my term with 20 new members. This was a lot of fun because I was able to grow in leadership

and personality wise to talk to strangers and spark conversations. After being Vice President of

Recruitment, I was Elected President. This was a big step for me, but I am very thankful for the

opportunity and the leadership experience it has granted me. I am now finishing my senior year

as the Vice president of Finance. I will graduate in the fall with an estimated 100 members of the

Triangle fraternity. This was a big step from where I was initiated bu,t I am grateful that I was

able to help the fraternity grow the way it has.

I got an internship this past summer for a company called IMA Automation North

America. After struggling to find an internship with multiple companies, I was excited to have an

opportunity close to home as a controls intern. IMA Automation North America is an automation

company that designs and builds automated testing machines for big medicine companies like

Lilly and AbbVie. For this internship, I was able to work with multiple different people. I tested

products for Lilly by running thousands of test products through a machine while adjusting small

things on the machine. I was able to help with the mechanical side of a machine and build a
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conveyor belt. I learned how to read electrical drawings and created I/O checklists. I was

assigned to different machines to ensure The I/O was working correctly; I would climb into the

machines and manually move them until the sensors lit up. I would also turn the machine on and

tell the machine to move different parts to see if the sensors also worked.

As graduation is approaching, I will graduate with my electrical engineering degree. I am

fortunate to have a full-time job lined up with IMA Automation as a full-time Controls Engineer.

I have learned so much at Iowa State and I want to thank every advisor, professor, TA, and

student that has helped me along the way. This college experience was the best thing I could ever

ask for.