In the research world, the summer (and the holidays) is the rare time where you can actually get work done. A tenure-track professor, in particular, isn't goin

In the research world, the summer (and the holidays) is the rare time where you can actually get work done. A tenure-track professor, in particular, isn't going to be taking 42% of the year off. They're going to be crushing it, attempting to turn out quality work and secure enduring funding. The reason to pursue a Ph.D. is love. Perhaps the reason to pursue a professorship: if you look at the combined tasks of committee-work, grant-applications, teaching, and research and think, "hell yes, I'm in!", it might be for you. As I worked through my undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc careers, I consistently noted that faculty were not, on average, all that happy. The work can have real purpose, but the sacrifices one (and their families) must make toward that purpose are substantial. A major reason that I left academia was that we were under-resourced, especially in institutional support, to do our jobs, despite being extremely well-funded by academic standards. The IT-onboarding my first day in industry was a huge breath of fresh air -- it would have taken 1-4 weeks to do in academia what was accomplished in 4 hr; industry values time.