I want to go on one of those cruises one day. Glad you had a great time. Good luck to your husband—let us know what happens!
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D25 texted me on Saturday to ask if the plane ticket could be changed earlier, since I bought it for the end of the exam period, and she’s done with everything except for a paper to hand in on the 18th, which can be done from home just as well as the dorm. So, I hoped that I had bought the “can change for no charge” level on expedia, and got her to download the app and check. Turns out I did spring for that a couple of months ago, so for only the difference in fares, she’s coming home right now! Which is pretty exciting, since we didn’t see her for Thanksgiving, so getting 4 extra days is the best Xmas present ever!
And thanks for the advice here to spring for the little bit extra to get the changeable plane ticket instead of the cheapest one, because it totally paid off!
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I mean, you’ll notice that I didn’t list engineering degrees in there! Because of licensing requirements and such, engineering degrees (and degrees in some other professional fields, e.g., nursing) really are necessary for a career in that field.
Changing from a preprofessional major to (what I guess we can call) a liberal arts major can be wrenching, and switching in the opposite direction can often be impossible—and either direction is likely to add extra time to degree completion. So yeah, it isn’t a choice to be made lightly.
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Oh 100%… I just meant that psychologically the switch has been difficult for her.
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As someone who back in the day switched from Chemical Engineering into College Arts & Humanities/Undeclared, yeah, it certainly is psychologically rough for some people (as it was for me)—at some level, you have to completely rethink who you’d thought you are and would be.
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This is it EXACTLY.
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Um. I’m 50 and pretty much still doing this on the regular.
Like I changed jobs in September of 2024 - to a similar job in terms of title, but very different in terms of scope and client audience. And the change really really made me think hard about what kind of professional I am, where I want my career to go, what I see as the rest of my working life.
Like, two jobs ago, until May 2023, I was doing something that involved leading a large group with a large budget on issues that were frequently in the news. Then we had some staffing changes and I got a boss that was just a bad fit for me. I took a new job, in something much… smaller. But I took it thinking it was a break for my mental health, something where I would feel better, and, frankly, an interim step while I healed from a psychologically rough patch.
When i took the current job, it was a very definite choice - not to escape something bad, but to decide how to pivot my career and to really define who I am and what I want from the rest of my professional working years. It was a really hard switch for me. In a lot of ways, it felt like I was going backwards. But when i looked at the things that really mattered, and that I really cared about, and what kind of environment I wanted to be in with what type of colleagues, it was the right call. Even if it also felt like a very conscious decision to become a small fish, and potentially limit future big fish opportunities.
I say all this @DivineMarshmallow, to say to your daughter - yeah, it’s a big change in thought process for now. But that’s ok, it doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation. You can, and likely will, be having these who are you, what’s next, what do you want thoughts for much of the rest of your life. And thinking about it now, pivoting now, is fine, it’s great even! It’s helping to build those muscles so that you are ready to be aware and responsive to what YOU need as a person, and to pursue the things that are right for you and to be aware of the paths out there and unafraid to consider alternates, if the one you are on doesn’t feel right. She’s laying good groundwork now for helping herself to be ready to see and take advantage of opportunities that help her be her best self. It’s hard and scary, but great.
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Thank you!
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This is something I like quite a bit, when past-self did something that is great for present-self. DH calls me a precrastinator but sometimes it pays off!
In our case, DH just went to spend a very long day (flew down) helping DS move from his old dorm to his new dorm. He’ll have a kitchen there (we’ll still buy some meals on the plan) and hopefully will stop losing weight. He absolutely should not be losing weight and has lost 11 pounds as I may have mentioned above. We hoped he could manage the move himself, but with finals and projects there was literally no way. I feel really bad for the kids who didn’t get their new leases in time, because with no space overlap, they have to move all their stuff “somewhere” for break and then move it all back into the new place at the start of the spring semester.
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You guys…I feel like I just aged ten years in the space of an hour…My S25 got confused about his flight time and thought it left 3 hrs later than it did! He got the landing and take off times confused somehow. He was texting me about needing toothpaste of all things when I thought he should already be on his way to the airport or already there…He said his flight took off at 2pm, and I was like, “Huh? I thought it landed at 2pm?” (My husband bought the ticket, so I hadn’t actually seen seen it for myself). He looked again and realized I was right. 
But crisis averted…He went from sitting in his room finishing packing to sitting on the plane at IAH (Houston) in one hour…and campus is about 30 min. from the airport! I’m so thankful I made him get TSA pre-check, because he made it thru security in 8 minutes.
Had we not been talking about toothpaste, I might have already been driving to the airport by the time he realized he missed his flight, since we live 90 minutes away from our closest big airport that he flies into.
Oy, this kid!!! This is why he is my mathematician…my younger two are the future engineers but S25 has his head in the clouds…
Not the first time he has made a mistake for not looking at all the practical details!
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Oof! I am SO glad that all worked out!
The things teen brains do. I did some not-so-great things with flights when I was in college, and I really was a super organized person, even then. Brains really are not 100% cooked yet at that age.
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OMG. I had palpitations reading that, lol – so glad the crisis was averted!
And it’s very common for these brilliant kids to gloss over regular life stuff. I always joke that my oldest can easily translate from Greek and Latin and discuss the minutiae of language, but she has trouble knowing how long to microwave something. (Actually, that’s not even a joke, it’s 100 percent true, lol.)
My D22 is flying home tomorrow, but luckily she’s able to fly out of HOU, which is much easier to get to than IAH!
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As a former math major, I can only say that this sort of thing is very familiar.
I remember one time on my way home I walked from my dorm with my suitcase to the Mass Ave bus in Cambridge. The bus was pulling up as I got there so I stepped right on without breaking my pace. I got to the Arlington MBTA station and got to the platform just as the train pulled up – again no wait at all. I switched trains at Government Center again with no wait at all. Got to the airport T stop just as the bus pulled up to take me to the terminal. Got to the terminal and the flight was already boarding so I walked right on board. Then I thought “how come I am barely on time for boarding when I never waited for ten seconds at any connection along the way?”. It turns out I had grossly messed up in planning my original departure time, and just got lucky.
Maybe mathematicians are lucky.
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I really thought this story was going to end with your flying to the wrong city. 
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I thought it was going to have him on the wrong bus and somewhere in Belmont, MA. (Because that happened to me on a Mass Ave bus in the 1980s - I only realized it well on my way to wherever I wasn’t going. I think the irony is that stretch was part of my commute in the oughts, actually.)
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In Paris in the summer of ‘24, we (all six in our family) got on a bus going the opposite direction of what we wanted (a roundabout was involved and we really thought we were in the same spot as where we had caught the bus the day before).
We rode to the end of the very long line before we realized what happened….we filed off the bus and back on for a very long trip. We decided the driver must have thought we were so crazy.
We finally got to our hotel an hour later and realized S27 had left his phone on the bus!!! 
We had location tracking on it though and watched it clearly riding around on the same very long bus route we had just been on! We waited at the stop by the hotel for the bus to return and the driver saw us and totally knew we were there for the phone, which he had heard ringing (before we realized it was on the bus we called it) and had grabbed for safe keeping.
I like to think that he told stories of “that crazy American family” for days after.
I got home with S25 about an hour ago….it’s so nice to have him home and now he has another travel story to laugh about (and hopefully pay closer attention to his flight details next time!!!)
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My kiddo wrapped up their last final! Driving home tomorrow:) yippee!
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I thought you were going to say you left your luggage at the curb at the first bus stop.
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I would love to pick your brain about your kiddo’s experience first semester – after they have a chance to decompress over the break, and you hear more details about it, lol. 
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Please have him checked for type 1 diabetes if he is losing a lot of weight!
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