Take a look at the hobby and see if it’s something you might want to get into. For many electronic and electrical engineers, Ham Radio was a stepping stone into their professional careers.

Once licensed – one of the many things you can do within the hobby is to build your own radios – either from scratch, or by purchasing kits. Note, Ham Radio electronic kits don’t really get into surface mount components – too complicated to deal with micro sized parts, but these kits do use regular old PC boards and all the usual component parts – capacitors, resistors, inductors, relays, transistors, Integrated circiuts, etc.

Browse for starters:

WWW.ARRL.ORG

WWW.ELECRAFT.COM

WWW.EHAM.Net

and with probes instead of fingers

Get the Getting STarted in Electronics, Forrest Mims III

they used to have it at radio shack, maybe ebay has it

don’t open any monitors or play with house wiring or power supplies till you know the dangers