Is everything about this gig great (or even good)? Of course not. There definitely are times when I'm not a lot of fun to be around. Every university is a politically charged bureaucracy and in many cases the best one can hope for is to be treated with an attitude of benign neglect. Never mind the fact that all universities, by definition, depend critically on professors to handle the business that needs to be handled (service, teaching, and research). And let's face it … the vast majority of professors would not be on one's short list of People I Would Like To Share a Table With At A Dinner Party.
What is very nearly always great about the job, though, is the interaction with students. Yes there is the inevitable whiner here and there, but in my career they have been extremely few and far between. I like most of my students and former students very much, and many of them (you) have become lifelong friends. Of course "liking" one's students isn't what it's all about, but there is no question that when students and faculty are on relatively good terms, the learning experience is far better than it otherwise would be. When students sense that faculty care about what is going on in their lives, they tend to try harder. By the same token, if faculty know that students aren't shooting daggers at them, they do a better job of holding up their end of the deal. It definitely is a two-way street.
So … again, thanks to all of you for giving peaks to my valleys.
Mike
P.S. … I've re-established my Twitter presence at https://twitter.com/reclusivecodger. And for the Trinity students and former students in the crowd, you may also be interested in following the School of Business at https://twitter.com/tu_business. I manage that account as well.
