I was in fact fortunate enough to land an academic position... especially a relatively enjoyable one. Tenure is nice, too! My education at Mudd was a thorough preparation for graduate study... that was no problem.

Congratulations on the department's recent vigorous activity! It sounds great in that it provides more research opportunities for undergraduates....

I love teaching (but then, I learned from the best), and love my research - it's trying to do both all the time that I am finding taxing.

I would say, using myself as an example, having a Physics background is a tremendous asset no matter what field one decides to go into. I really think that the problem solving skills I learned as a Physics major have helped me in my Engineering work. Also, since Physics is so fundamental to everything else (perhaps my view here is a little jaded?) there is no way to go wrong by learning Physics first and then moving up to other disciplines. ('Up' in the sense that 'C' is a higher level language than 'assembly'.) And now seems to be a great time for well-skilled scientists here in the Silicon Valley. The group I am in at IBM is concerned with magnetic disk media and most of the PhD's are from Physics/Material Science backgrounds.