Journalism/Broadcasting engineering as a future career?

Aidan_daly

I've always had an interest in journalism and the way broadcasting the news or other media works. So I've been thinking about having a career in journalism (as in broadcasting or transmitting it and working behind the scenes, rather than reading or presenting it) or broadcasting engineering when I'm older. Currently I'm 16 years old and I just completed transition year, and the leaving cert subjects that I picked are art, geography, French and DCG and I'm also considering doing LCVP. Because broadcasting engineering is quite a specific career, I haven't found any courses specifically for that on qualifax.ie, mostly just broadcasting and media.

Subject wise, I should be alright getting whatever broadcasting or journalism course I pick in 2 years time though, because I'm quite good at English for journalism, and broadcasting might not absolutely require any specific subjects to get in but just a specific amount of points. But are there any leaving cert subjects that I may or may not have picked that might come in very handy for my desired courses? Or any skills that are compulsory for them?

Finally, what exactly would you learn or do in broadcasting courses? Because I might not like the course and feel like I made the wrong choice halfway through the year. Thank you.

Overheal

Maybe I'm misreading this but I don't think what you're asking to do sounds like its really Engineering in the normal sense. Sounds like technician-level work even. It sounds like you're more interested in the doing and the culture of the media business than say, becoming an electrical engineer and going blind by your senior year on electrical signaling theory and imaginary numbers and all that? Or doing product development or researching new broadcasting techniques, etc. more of your work would be tradecraft than analytical expertise, whereas engineering can often be more about the nuts and bolts of every little @%$%@ thing about whatever system you're working on. Imagine being the guy who has to understand the signaling science behind stuff like say, fiber optics or LTE.

I can't think of any electives you could otherwise take besides what you have there, that really apply (and I forget whats available). If you're considering any sort of engineering, know that its all heavily founded on math math math. And in your case probably a lot of programming, and web-based development, which can take a thousand different forms. Honors math should be a focus of yours, engineers in any field should be fluent in advanced calculus and differential equations, linear algebra (thank me later), computer/numerical math (eigenvalues/eigenvectors/ode solvers), taylor series, and all those other abjectly scary sounding things like complex numbers that are easier the earlier you apply yourself to learning them.