[waynehoskins]

I've got the same idea as Mike. I started as an EE major and switched to theatre quickly after the theatre bug caught up with me again and I found the department. But I did take a few EE classes as electives after I switched. They're useful to have, since being in entertainment production we pretty much deal with the same sorts of stuff, just differently.

If UT Arlington still had its old Engineering Technology department (disappeared in the late '60s), I'd probably have tried to minor in that. I kinda wished I'd actually minored in some kind of engineering since I'm a database guy by day now; some CSE classes would have been nice.

Advice from hindsight: take a handful of engineering classes. Mechanical and Electrical (and with softwarey stuff being more prevalent, CSE) will broaden your knowledge base and technical understanding of how things work.

A few classes from the music department might help as well. UTA didn't have any courses in sound under the theatre department (except a lecture or two in Stagecraft II), so for the fun of it I took a recording class from the music department. I enjoyed it and learned a couple of things.

I don't remember much of Taylor series and McLauren series and loop currents and node voltages and such, at least equation-wise, but all the basic concepts will help you. Signal flow and troubleshooting will be very important things to learn.

But those are just my rambling ideas .. note that I got my BFA in theatre design and production, and I work as a database guy and do theatre on the side. The broader your education base, the better you'll be.