Making the switch

A college student’s story of following his true passion despite the consequences.

Deciding on a major can be difficult in itself, but what happens when you finally find the major that’s right for you – half way through your college career?

Sean Torney, a student at Virginia Tech, used to be a computer engineering major until two years into his degree, it all clicked for him.

“I found myself saying ‘just two more years until graduation, you can do this,’ and then I realized, well if I graduate as a computer engineering major, that’s what I’m going to end up doing as a career,” said Torney.

He knew that computer engineering wasn’t for him anymore, but was lost as to where to go from there. For Torney, deciding on a major didn’t happen overnight. It took a while for him to realize what he was truly passionate about and what he wanted to peruse after college.

“I thought about what my next step was, and sports was always something I had been passionate about. I saw that multimedia journalism had a sports analytics track and it just all started to come together for me.”

Photo by Sarah Carr

Torney had to make an important decision. He had to decide if following his true passion for sports was worth the consequences he would face by switching majors late in his college career.

“I transferred into the Department of Communications and ended up being a second semester junior taking freshman level classes. It took me a full semester of trying out what I thought I wanted to do, to actually deciding that I wanted to do it.”

Despite not being able to graduate with his friends, making the switch from computer engineering to multimedia journalism was all worth it in the end, as Torney is now on the right track when it comes to perusing what he loves.

As for his advice to others, he encourages those who think that they might be in the wrong major to take a step back and rethink what they really want to do as a career.

“You ultimately have to think about what you want to do for the rest of your life, and if that means switching your major, then go for it.”