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I grew up in central Illinois and have only recently begun recovering. My undergraduate work was at Stanford, where I majored in physics. Physics is a fine major provided that you recognize that a BS in physics will not qualify you for any work requiring an extensive physics background. I recommend treating physics as a form of liberal education, more akin to english than to electrical engineering, and resigning yourself to grad school and, most likely, years as a postdoc.
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Having discovered that real-life physics tends to be more about fiddling with algebra than designing warp drive engines, I switched fields and entered graduate school in computer science at the Unversity of Wisconsin, Madison. I soon identified computer graphics as a field suitably tuned to my interests, and have worked in this area for the past four years. It turns out to still involve a fair amount of fiddling with algebra. My work has revolved around animating humans, and if you want to know any more about this you should look here.
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My primary hobby over the past decade or so has been martial arts. I took a year of tae kwon do in high school, aiki-jujitsu and a formal aiki weapons class (jo and bokken) in college, and capoeria in grad school, with forays along the way into thai kickboxing and brazilian jiu-jitsu. Still, I'm just a hobbyist, the arts I've studied the longest (aiki-jujitsu and capoeira) are not particularly useful for beating people up, and I only weigh 140 pounds, so I'm not much of a threat. If you are considering taking up an empty-handed martial art for self-defense purposes and are not willing to get beaten up fairly often, I recommend instead determining what weapons you are legally entitled to carry and learning how to use them.
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