EE 494

Jianyi Li

Cumulative Reflection

03/12/19

Cumulative Reflection

Iowa State University is excellent engineering school for me to learn Electrical

Engineering knowledge. Here in Iowa State University, I can easily access many kinds of

devices for my engineering class, so that I can learn how to use these devices whenever. I

also met a lot of friends from engineering college and doing projects with them during

these four college years. During these four college years, there are several wonderful

classes for me. I will list several classes below and talk about them.

The first one I want to talk about is EE 333, It is an excellent class I have taken in these

four years. In this class, the most important thing for students is to design two PCBs with

own design circuits. In this course, knowledges we could access are learning the structure

of PCB, some technologies during making PCB, some special circuit we could use when

we are making circuit, and the software which we could use for making our own PCB.

MultiSim is used for analyzing the circuits we have made, and design PCB in the Ulti-

Board. the In this course, I did two projects during fall 2018, one is Active Crossover

Network, another one is Pulse oximeter for measuring heart rate in PCB. When we were

in the lab, we could also get helps from TA in this class. I think making a PCB by using

MultiSim and Ulti-Board is an important personal skill even in the future when I want to

find a job.
Second one, I want to say is senior design. In this course, we have over than 100 choices

for us to decide what we want to design, and we also could have excellent teammates did

same project with us. My senior design is implement web portal for doing drone

Simulation. In the second semester, we got our own drone for us to

follow up on our project. Although the project is pretty complex for us to finish, and there

are many things for us to figure out, we have a great moment with our teammates when

we are solving the problems together. I think, this course is important one for us in the

college to work with different people, so that we could have better team spirit in the

future when we need to work with other people in the job. What we have done is finish

the ROS packages in the Raspberry pi 3 and made a simulator in the Ubuntu system and

we also have done the computer version. I am happy I have these excellent teammates in

the senior design. After one and half semester, my communication and team spirit got

improved. Senior design is wonderful class for every engineering students.

The courses we have done in the Iowa State University, whether they easy or hard, we

could have useful sources to learn and practice them with excellent examples that are

posted online. We also could have clear schedule for us to follow and manage our time to

study.

In Iowa State University, there are also many kinds of Club for us to join. Take the Audio

Club, which is leading by Gary Tuttle, it is a good club for me to learn many skills and

electrical knowledge out of class. There are many kinds of ideas for us to design some

useful circuit, such as speaker we have done in the club.

After learning knowledge from Iowa State University, I think I am prepared to design

circuit for doing more about hardware and figure out the analog and digital circuit
problems from knowledge I learned in Iowa State University. After senior design, I think

I can easily work with my teammates in the future, and I also learned professional and

ethical responsibilities from reflection courses, such as EE 394 and EE 494. Meanwhile,

when I was doing my projects, Professors and TAs in the lab always help me a lot to

finish my projects perfectly and on time, and I also got many helps from the courses’

notes and lectures. Whenever I think about the lifelong learning, I always believe that it is

never too old to learn, after I learned the EE 330, I believe it more than before, I haven’t

know enough knowledge to solve the problems I met whether it is in the exam and in the

projects I am doing now.

In the end, I want to say that I am very happy that I can complete my degree at Iowa State

University. Although there are many difficult courses I need to overcome, I still maintain

my mentality to overcome them one by one. I learned a lot of useful things and applied

them to my project. Now, I am looking for a job, my project and my knowledge have

helped me a lot, they can make me stand out among the many candidates and let me get

more job opportunities I want. In many people's eyes, engineering is a difficult

profession, but for me, this is a good opportunity to challenge yourself and overcome

yourself. I am very grateful to Iowa State University. It has accepted me a lot and has

helped me a lot, both in learning and in life. It also gave me a good environment to learn

more. I hope that in the future I will be able to win glory for Iowa State University

through my own strength.