"I think that teaching is like medicine, law, marriage counseling, postdoctoral research, and just about any other career: It's hard to know if you'll like it until you try it for real. You can't really learn what it's like, day-to-day and year-to-year, by watching from the outside."
A difference with those other fields is that teaching is ensconced in an inflexible, pathological bureaucracy. Although, that could be my ideological bias talking.
Wait, are you saying that medicine and counseling don't have pathological bureaucracy? Have you asked your doctor to describe exactly how much time and effort it takes to get money from dozens of separate insurance companies, all of which are using every trick in the book to avoid paying? Or are you lucky enough to live in a civilized country?
And, please, don't even ask about postdoctoral research and the attendent interactions with university bureaucracy, departmental politics, and Federal grant review processes. Or I might need counseling. And my insurance doesn't cover that. :)
A difference with those other fields is that teaching is ensconced in an inflexible, pathological bureaucracy. Although, that could be my ideological bias talking.