But I rarely find myself using my physics intuition in the real world.

Really? I quite often find myself evaluating claims and arguments from others in terms of physics intuition.

But this certainly doesn't require specialist level physics knowledge. Speaking as someone who spent many years of my youth dreaming of being a physicist, and eventually changed my mind, I'd say that some of the motivations involved were

*Attraction of an archetype. If you identify as an intelligent, intellectually curious person, being a physicist is an obvious and available career path, because so many of our archetypical examples of intelligent, intellectually curious people are physicists.

*Intellectual status. This ties into the first concern; because physicists are some of the first people that most people think of when considering archetypes for intelligence, being a physicist has a great deal of signaling value. Also, on some level, studying the most fundamental workings of the universe simply sounds more impressive than studying things several steps up the chain.