iFoundry: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

I feel iFoundry has been an incredibly beneficial experience throughout this semester. To start off, I'll talk about the good things that I feel I've learned from iFoundry (and there are A LOT). First off, I really enjoyed the different lectures we had in class. They were very very interesting and I learned a lot about what iFoundry defined as the missing basics at the beginning of the year. My favorite lecture was the one about how to ask questions. I feel it really has helped me in both academics and in life. I also felt what we touched on in lectures are things that will definitely give me an advantage when going into the workplace, like email etiquette and engineering ethics. Overall the lectures were very very helpful and have made me realize other things that I am interested in, like systems engineering. I hope to take more classes, like some of the newer ones, later on as well. The readings were very interesting, especially The Back of the Napkin. I feel this book is a perfect one to study for a course like this.

The other part of the class, the "lab" portion, was at times stressful and overwhelming but was fun. I enjoyed working in a group and I met a lot of new people, but some of the workload was a bit much especially considering it was only a 1 hour class. There were numerous times our group had to meet outside of class which was very hard with everyones busy schedules.

The other aspect of iFoundry, the iCommunity, was very interesting and I felt was unique, but I can't really comment on it because I was never really able to go to the meetings because I had a class during the weekly times we met. Our iTeam however, TIPS, is probably one of my favorite things I am involved in here on campus. I love the group I chose, Service and Systems Engineering, and I really enjoy the activities we are doing (like the State Farm application process project). TIPS has really engaged me to the more business aspects of engineering, which I have discovered I really like. Also working with students from other departments is very real world like and I enjoy it a lot!

All in all iFoundry has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me and I hope to continue to stay involved throughout my time here at Illinois!