What To Do When Your College Sophomore Wants To Switch Majors From IT To Maritime
The chipped edge of my son’s lo mein container knocked against my grading laptop last Sunday night, and I looked up to find him leaning across the kitchen table, screen tilted toward me. “I need to tell you something,” he said, the corner of his coffee-stained IT department hoodie tugged down over his wrist. He’d spent the last two years working toward his bachelor’s in information technology, picked it senior year because everyone said it was stable, guaranteed a job right out of school, and my brother, a software developer, had offered to help him land an internship.
For three months he’d been coming home every weekend, dragging his backpack in and flopping on the couch without talking about the side projects he used to brag about. I’d noticed he was watching ship-spotting YouTube instead of coding tutorials while he ate, but I didn’t push. I see enough 19-year-olds going through slumps as a high school teacher to know most will come around to talking when they’re ready.
That night, he got straight to the point: he wanted to transfer to the state maritime academy, switch to a nautical science degree, and work toward his license as a deck officer. I almost spilled my iced tea. Two years of tuition, two years of credits – what does that even mean, working on a ship? I’d had this quiet whole plan: he graduates, gets an entry dev job at my brother’s company, rents a small apartment in the city, builds up savings. None of that included being out at sea for weeks at a time.
But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I pushed my grading aside and said, “Show me what you’ve found already.” That’s the first thing I’ve learned from all the parent meetings I’ve sat through: when a kid comes to you after months of turning over a big change, they don’t need your objections first. They need to show you they’ve done their homework.
He pulled up his notes, and I was surprised how much work he’d already put in. He’d mapped every credit he’d earned so far. All of his general education classes – English, calculus, physics – transfer over. He only loses two elective credits, which means he’s only one semester behind instead of the two I guessed. Tuition at the maritime academy is $3,000 less a year than the public university he attends now, and the program guarantees a paid work placement for the entire third year. Entry level salary for a licensed third mate is actually $10,000 higher a year than the average entry level IT job in our state. He’d even talked to his cousin, who works on an ocean research vessel out of Alaska, and had a list of questions he still wanted answered.
I didn’t say yes or no that night. I said let’s schedule two quick things this week: a 20-minute call with the transfer advisor, and a quick chat with the recent grad the admissions office connected him with. That’s a small, concrete step any parent can take, instead of panicking or forcing a decision over dinner. Let someone who actually does the job tell you the parts that don’t make it to the college viewbook.
That chat didn’t sugarcoat anything. The grad talked about 12-hour shifts in 30-degree weather, how the first six months of training your feet ache so bad you can barely sleep through the night, how you miss holidays and birthdays when your tour gets extended. My son just nodded, and said he’d already watched enough unscripted vlogs from working mariners to know it wasn’t all sunsets on the open ocean. He said when he went out with his cousin last summer for a week, he pulled a 10-hour shift helping repair a winch and didn’t check his phone once. That’s something he hadn’t done since he started coding full time.
As a teacher, I see this every year. Seniors pick majors based on what’s trending, what their parents think is safe, what social media says will make them rich. By sophomore year, when they’re actually in the thick of classes and starting to imagine what the job will look like every day, half of them realize they picked wrong. The biggest mistake parents make is treating that like a failure. I’ve had parents yell at their kid for switching after three semesters, call all that time wasted. But those semesters aren’t wasted. They taught your kid what they don’t want, which is the most useful thing you can learn in college. My son’s IT skills aren’t for nothing, either. All modern ships run on complex navigation software, and the advisor said his coding background will make him a more competitive candidate for officer roles than most incoming students.
We didn’t jump straight into dropping out and re-enrolling, either. He’s finishing out this semester at his current school, then he’s taking the two missing pre-requisite classes over summer at our local community college for $300 total, instead of paying full price at the academy. That cuts down on cost and risk, if he decides after starting that it’s not for him. We still have a little savings set aside for college, so we can absorb the extra semester, but even if we couldn’t, maritime has apprenticeship pathways that don’t require a full four-year degree up front anyway.
Last weekend, he went down to the local boat yard to help an old friend of my husband fix up a small fishing boat. He came home with a sunburn across his nose, grease under his fingernails that didn’t wash out for two days, and talked the whole dinner about how they rewired the navigation system. That’s the most I’ve heard him talk about anything in a year. We’re still waiting on his transfer acceptance, and it’s not a done deal. Even if he gets in, he might get out on his first long tour and hate every minute of it. He might switch again in three years. But what I’ve learned is that a pivot at 20 is a whole lot easier to manage than a career change at 35, when you’re stuck paying a mortgage and stuck in a job you hate. For right now, we’re taking it step by step, one phone call and one boat yard visit at a time.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What To Do When Your College Sophomore Wants To Switch Majors From IT To Maritime