The outreach stuff itself isn't that bad, and it can be fun to see a bunch of 'civilians' get excited about a topic that you yourself care deeply about. It is f

The outreach stuff itself isn't that bad, and it can be fun to see a bunch of 'civilians' get excited about a topic that you yourself care deeply about. It is frustrating that you need to shoehorn it into all sorts of proposals where it doesn't make a ton of sense: Why is the funding for a bunch of PhDs to study A linked to their willingness to explain B to a bunch of K-12 students? On the other hand, the administrative stuff (writing your own grants, reviewing other people's papers and grants, and getting things like purchase orders and experiment approval through the university) takes a huge amount of time and is fantastically unrewarding.