English Major Turned Submarine Nuke

In a story that's opposite that of WillyShake (submarine nuke turned English Lit guy), DefenseLINK has a profile of a submarine officer who started his career as an English major at the Academy:

"Backhaus graduated from the academy in 2001 with a major in English. He earned a master's degree in literature, then went on to nuclear power school and the submarine fleet, an unconventional move for a non-engineering major. He returned in January for a shore tour to teach alongside his former professors in the English department.
"Backhaus said that while attending the academy he thought the midshipmen who wanted to be submariners were all "big geeks."
"That's a stereotype that's out there," he said. He told himself as a plebe -- freshman in academy jargon -- "I'm never going to be a submariner; that just sounds terrible."

As the story implies, most submarine officers have technical majors in college; I'm not sure if the rule's still in force, but I remember that there was generally a limit of 10% of all submarine officers chosen for any year group that could have non-technical majors.

On USS Topeka, we had one JO when I was there who had been a poli sci major -- inevitably, we called him our zampolit. Since all the line officers who get to the boat have made it through the nuke pipeline, there really isn't any difference between any of them, but I think there's still a little bit of a "huh?" reaction people have whenever they see a liberal arts guy on a boat.