[FuzzieAlum]

Why would you expect career advice from a professor/advisor? That's not their job, or their area of expertise. They should be able to tell you what classes to take (no excuse for getting that wrong!), and if you decide to head for academia yourself, no doubt their personal experience will come in handy - they too took the GRE and navigated PhD applications, etc.

But most professors have spent their entire lives in academia - or their non-academic experience was decades ago. Why should they know what you can do with a physics (or English or anything else) degree? Go to the career office for that. Now if the career office is crappy, that's a problem, but it's not your professor's fault.

As for h.s. counselors, well, I've known very few people who had good experiences with them. That's no excuse of course. Just an observation.