Gen Ed Reflection

What makes my university experience special is not the technical knowledge I come out
with. If that we’re all it was then nobody would bother going to college. Every line of code I wrote
and equation I solved can be found for free on the internet. What makes college important is the
time you get with people who think differently. People who dont tell, but show you how to move
outside the bubble of criticality and observe things in a new way. A lot of the time, engineering
curriculums try to show this but its lost in a mess of forcing students to “think differently”. You
can’t tell someone to think differently and expect it to happen. This is why I value my time in
General electives so much. Applying different schools of thought to engineering processes is
extremely important to efficient and enlightened problem solving.
In order to further make my argument, I would like to bring up my time in Relig 358,
Introduction to Islam. First off, I am not a Muslim. Going into this course I had very little
understanding of Islamic history and the rich culture that went with it. To make an analogy of
how this course appeared to me, I was expecting a river but what I got was the grand canyon in
front of me. The class exposed us to culture and history in a way I had never experienced
before. In lecture we were not spoken at but instead, we were required to do readings and then
asked about what we thought of them. The professor encouraged us to think critically, look for
details in text, and make inferences and conclusions based on our findings. He however did not
tell us to do this. He showed us and challenged us to find these skills on our own. This is what I
learned from religious studies. How to analyze details and come to conclusions. Nothing is
surface level but if you look hard enough and can find enough “dots”, those dots start to
connect.
This level of detail is incredibly important in an engineering environment. Engineering is
about precision and a lot of the time an engineer will see a singular problem, a singular solution,
and try it. It can be helpful and efficient to look for problems where you don't see them. To
evaluate all points and perspectives before coming to a conclusion, just like I did in that religious
studies class. Climate change is largely discussed topic where blame is thrown around a lot and
fingers are pointed. Rather than point fingers it would be more efficient to study the problem
from every possible angle, getting multiple perspectives, a mass of data from different
viewpoints and compile one report that shows the problem as a whole rather than just in pieces.
This could help people come together to find a solution to the problem as a whole at one time
rather than individual feeble attempts at mending a massive problem.
In addition to that, I can bring up my experiences in Music 346. While this course was
technically a programming course, it was different in the fact that it requires creativity and artistic
thinking. In my past experience a program served a function that was given. Professor gives
problem, we start with what we have and move towards a solution. Trying to program a musical
environment is different. There are no restrictions, no specified end goal. Your creativity is what
dictates what you program and when you do it. This idea of being able to start with nowhere to
end and let your creativity help you find the way can be an asset to engineers in certain
situations. If an engineer isn't given a defined end goal by a client, but instead a set of
parameters to start with, it would be efficient to start with those parameters and see where the
project goes. There are lots of problems we need solutions to that we can’t fix because there is
no defined solution. If you start with what you do know and let creativity drive engineers may
come up with all sorts of strange but efficient solutions to complex future engineering problems.
While the technicality of an engineering curriculum is important, you can't force someone
to “think like an engineer”, and sometimes engineers really shouldn’t be “thinking like
engineers”. It’s important to use the experiences and lessons learned in general elective classes
to move back from technical thinking and instead evaluate things creatively or critically.