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Hey everybody, I am in a quandary: I was accepted with (grad teaching assistant) funding into an economics PhD program that begins in about a month, but through my experience with an econometrics class over the summer session and its conflicting with my understanding of (Austrian) economics and history, I am having serious doubts about entering the program, though it is counted as one of the 5 "heterodox" econ programs in the country. About me: I'm 30 and haven't settled on a career path, changing several times after graduating from a "top-20" university with honors, majoring in anthropology. I went from working in film to education to a survival job at a credit union in order to establish in-state residency for going back to school. I recognize that I probably latched on to going into econ without doing enough research about the realities of the field -- or more properly, I did a good amount of research without fully appreciating my ideological divergence from that reality. It's crunchtime now, and econometrics is making me want to pluck out my eyeballs. I have the grad level econometric theory class on dock for the fall semester, and I'm dreading the idea of learning "applied" and "empirical" methods that lack a real correlation with reality and historical context. I also feel like this program is a preparation for career that may not be available if/when I finish it due to the student debt bubble, and then I'll have what is really a limited set of impractical skills, 5 years of opportunity cost, and worst, not having built a stronger foundation to weather the coming economic storms. Alternatively I had also considered going back to school for engineering, which would require a second bachelors (unless I went to the non-ABET accredited LEAP program at Boston University), to gain skills that would offer me job security as well as skills applicable to entrepreneurial pursuits (which I think/fear may be my real passion). I lack experience in either of these avenues, but was encouraged (after taking a 7-hour aptitude test) to strongly consider engineering. Can anyone out there offer some practical advice? I'm open to considering any valid opinion. Thanks and kind regards to you all, Fitz PS. Also for what it's worth, I destroyed the GRE (96th %ile Verbal, 83rd %-ile Quant, 98th %-ile Writing), and attribute a good deal of it to studying the trivium method, logical fallacies, and philosophy in my spare time.