Great essay. You really are a gifted teacher. Cheers!!! But, was it this odd detour/advance or the shutting down of the super collider that put so many theoretical physicists out of work? I still remember an astrophysics professor telling me "there is no fulcrum in the void", so I shifted over to economics and its promise of "social physics". That, of course, was bald-faced lie, and economics is neither a science nor all that social. As for leaving the "hard sciences", I would say that it is social sciences which are really hard (i.e., difficult) and with so much more at stake.