It seems like there is plenty of potential essay subjects when it comes to audio electronics.

• 1) Planned obselescence, small companies making electronics are more likely to promote fixing things rather than scrapping and moving on.
• 2)Anything about how much our choice of tools dictate the sound of our work.
• 3) Being creative within rigid constraints.
• 4) designing circuits is often bad for the environment and unsustainable – components break down over time and need to be replaced, the overwhelming majority of electronics are not recycled.
• 5) Is it a good thing that we understand nothing about the innerworkings of our equipment? Is that a priviledge?
• 6) Cutting out the middleman – design the equipment that you would like to use, at wholesale cost.

Although pretty much all of these topics relate directly to my own practise as an aspiring circuit designer, I think some of these are more related to experienced electronic engineers. For example, no.6: years and maybe decades of experience are needed to design and create electronics up to specifications that can be used in a professional audio capacity. No.5 also requires years of experience, and relates to fixing electronics which is a particularly hard field to get into.

I think a topic more suited to my abilities would focus more on the aspect of learning electronics, touching upon areas such as ‘why learn electronics during a digital age’, ‘the difficulties of learning electronics when fewer and fewer experts exist’, ‘ensuring that there are enough technicians to maintain the vintage equipment that is so fetishised within the field of audio’, ‘the benifits of learning to fail, and how electronics teaches that’.