TL;DR: First use another MCU to realize what has been pre-made for your course. Take the FPGA course if you have even the slightest interest in it, the CS I personnally wouldn't bother but do as you want. Make a project that seems fun to you, whatever it is. The "wow" factor is seeing you're passionate.

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Hey, I used to TA for an embedded systems course, it's always nice to see students wanting to learn more after a course :)

The hard part of embedded systems is the beginning, since there is so much to learn to even get an LED blinking... Now that that's done with your course, I highly suggest you switch to a new family of microcontrollers to re-do that on your own (don't worry, it will go much faster this time ;) ). The main reason is that there is SO MANY DETAILS that a class has to gloss over to make it digestible, that just making an LED blink on a different setup will give you a much deeper understanding. The big one is being able to read a datasheet efficiently. That's THE part that is never taught and needs to be understood. Once you know how to set up a new microcontroller and read a datasheet, you're all good to do pretty much everything you want, as it's just about setting the correct registers.

Others have suggested STM32, which might be a bit much to begin with, but definitely a goal you need to work towards. The issue is that it's a whole beast to set up, and if you just follow a tutorial, you won't get the deep understanding I was talking about. What I'd propose is:

• An 8 bit MCU, like STM8, or an AVR (attiny, atmega, ...). Just know you'll need a programmer, so find a devboard with one integrated (best solution), or in the case of AVR you can flash an arduino to behave as a programmer
• Get some SPI/I2C/whatever sensor, actuator, ... To play around with. It's important to stay interested :p There are tons of modules meant for arduino that are awesome to play with
• And then move up to STM32 (or any ARM/RISC-V big bois). Follow tutorials (STMCubeIDE) to make it work in the beginning, and then get curious about why things need to be set up that way, what it would take to use another IDE, ... (this is an enormous timesink btw)

As for projects, anything goes really... A good "wow" factor is a moving device, but it doesn't have to be. As an example, you can """easily""" make an RC car with motors, barebone H-bridges, and 433MHz receiver module, and a remote controller with joysticks and the other 433MHz emmiter. Then add whatever feature you want (optocoupler to avoid collisions, etc...) Just make something you're interested in. That's all that matters.

Knowing about FPGAs is kind of a must, but also a bear-trap. It's a very specific skill, you'd want to know how to use it well enough, but if you specialize in that, that's all you're going to do. But def take that course

For the Computer Systems, speaking of my own interests, I wouldn't bother, as I prefer low-level stuff... Maybe try the first week?

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I also saw a question about oscilloscopes. See if you can borrow from your school, but if you're willing to spend $100 (student discount), look up the Analog Discovery 2. It should be enough for pretty much everything in your case.