Thanks Mike!
Johnny, I didn't go to university. I did Maths and Physics at A-level, but failed physics - because I hated it! I wanted to do Maths, English and Music but my school wouldn't let me mix arts and sciences (this was the early '70s!), and I couldn't drop Maths because that was the stream I had been in since I was in the 4th year. It was a daft system, and I couldn't see the logic of it then, let alone now.
What I did do was go to work in various engineering companies and learned the hard way how things worked. I took cars and motorbikes apart in my spare time - and occasionally put them back together again. I raced karts for many years, doing my own mechanic-ing, and I did a bit of gliding. While at school, I joined the RAF CCF (a public-school version of the ATC), and, with a group of friends, started a Venture Scout troop. These two organisations gave me access to all sorts of opportunities to increase my education in more adventurous subjects.
After three years of going from job to job, in England and Germany, I joined the RAF as a pilot - with 5 O-levels, 1 A-level, no degree, and wearing glasses. I knew more than enough to understand how my aeroplane worked, at a time when the RAF practically expected its pilots to be able to rebuild an aeroplane single-handed! God knows why...
Now, as an airline pilot, I am not expected to know anywhere near as much about my aeroplane. And the guys and girls I fly with have hugely varied backgrounds - and very few of them have engineering degrees. In fact, not that many have degrees at all. So don't worry about being able to understand what the aeroplane is doing; you'll learn far more about that when you begin flying training. And don't worry about impressing an airline with your qualifications. Just concentrate on getting the best results you can in subjects that interest you, and, if you must do a degree, do it in something interesting and useful.
Scroggs