While I didn’t switch majors, I had a similar experience with my intro EE class. My theory was that it was intentionally a weeder class to push students towards the other engineering concentrations.

Intro EE is kinda brutal in that there’s a lot of theory to cover, and you need to build the intuition on how it applies to real world circuit design on the fly.

I had a bit of an epiphany when I was in a set theory/number theory class and some classmates were breezing through proofs that I struggled with. I was having to do algebraic manipulations in a way that was novel to me, but was intuitive to math nerds. I felt like that guy who didn’t “get” the intuition in an intro programming or circuits class.

But yeah, students often get some context for math or programming in high school, but rarely for circuit design. E&M in physics at best. EE programs have solved this by weeding out anyone who can’t bash their way through the foundational theory… which isn’t great.

If you’re still interested, I would recommend the Student Manual to the Art of Electronics. It’s a very practical, lab-based book that throws out a lot of the math in favor of rules of thumb and gaining intuition for circuit design.

The thing I hated most about EE 101 though was that the diagrams predated the discovery of the electron so all the arrows point the wrong way. AND NOBODY BOTHERED TO FIX IT. It felt like taking a racketball class with my foot stuck in a bucket.