Thanks for the passionate rant. I'm the guy who's about to make the big decision.

Something I found especially interesting was your point about unfashionable research not getting respect (and funding) in academia, even if it works out. I used to work at Caltech, and the biggest surprise for me was how much time the P.I. I was working for had to spend on grant proposals--and doing the political work to get people excited about his stuff. It struck me as pretty similar to entrepreneurship, actually, but with money coming from a very different source than happy customers.

I'm going to spend today and tomorrow acting as if I canceled my admission this year. Then I'll see how I feel on Friday.