Tech teacher Mr. Andrew Thomson majored in vocal music education and minored in musical theater at Eastern Michigan University. ”I worked backstage on several theater productions, both at the college and community level, and some of them at the professional level as touring shows came through the college,” he says. “And that’s where all that experience came from and my knowledge from audio and video equipment.” Mr. Thomson had not used his skills in a few years, but now in the interactive media program, he is doing video and audio production there. “Also, getting into the musical now, I’m also helping run lights and sounds and all that stuff for them as well,” he says. 

     The school he went to had a general music major, vocal and instrument and music education major, performance majors, and a music therapy program–similar to physical therapy but it “adds the music component because music connects so many parts of the brain that other things don’t have the ability to connect,” he explains. At other schools, you might find music production classes or master’s programs in composition. “There are tons of options out there for prospective music majors, but you have to be very careful about what colleges you go to because they might have a wide variety of different programs.”

     When he began college, he wanted to be a math teacher. “I had this wonderful teacher when I was in high school, Mr. Blanten, that inspired me to be a math teacher,” he says. “He was just a really cool, down-to-earth teacher. So then I went into math education, but I went to community college first because I didn’t want to spend all my money right out of the gate. I found out really quickly that being a math major was boring, so I dropped out of my calc classes and I doubled down on all of my music classes.”

     His choir director explained to him that he could be a music teacher if he wanted to. “I took a couple of years, focused on what I wanted to do, prepared and auditioned for a few colleges, and then chose Eastern Michigan to go to for music ed.”

     As for how he is currently teaching engineering, he did not see any positions opening in music, so when a teacher at the middle school retired, he decided to take that spot. “I took a couple of tests to get certified to teach tech-ed.” He has been teaching it for eight years since then. 

     “I would say don’t close yourself off to options you think don’t matter because math was always one of my big things and obviously that’s a big part of engineering, but I never actually ended up going to school for engineering and here I am teaching it,” Thomson says. “On top of that, now that I teach engineering here at the high school, I’m also in the interactive media program, using all of my computer skills, being involved in the theater program, so I can use those music and theater skills that I had. So don’t discount things that you like as not viable options for a career because they might show up in unexpected ways, sometimes.”

     Thomson’s dream is to open up a bakery. “I would love to own a bakery one day,” he starts. “My sister and I, for many years, have been making and perfecting cookies in particular, and we started selling them several years ago on the side from teaching, and it would be great one day to own a bakery and do that.”