I've posted before in teaching threads, but I'll reiterate my story for the OP's benefit.
Straight out of college I spent four years teaching high school, left the profession and now sitting three years past working in a job in sales. I think that teaching is a great profession to gain valuable life skills. As a teacher you are in sales, management, justice, administration, etc. However, I think to be a teacher of 5+ years, or even 10+ years requires that your personality matches up with the job, otherwise you will be a miserable human being (I know that we can all think of more than a few of those teachers we all had at one point).
Here's three things I miss and do not miss from the teaching profession.
Miss:
1) Interacting with high school students - it is awesome to be a person of influence in young people's lives. I truly miss not only teaching them curriculum but my own life lessons and wisdom I could impart to them
2) Actually teaching - in currently high schools the actual teaching of subject matter is probably 40-50% of the job. I loved my subject, I am very knowledgeable, and loved seeing kids learn what I was teaching
3) Being a member of the community. I really do miss shaking hands with parents at a football game, or being recognized at the grocery store as someone who is investing a career back into the people of the community.
Do not miss:
1) Other teachers. 10% will be your best friends, the rest are miserable terrible people that are afflicted with "everyone's out to get me" syndrome. The majority of teachers are constantly worried that administration just did an observation, or Johnny's mom sent me a nasty email, etc. Issues happen 100x daily as a teacher, some teachers seem unable to "let it go"
2) Working in the "system". Every job, corporate, government, local and otherwise has a "system" in which they operate. The public school system does not encourage best practices and top performance. This can easily escalate into a political discussion so I'll leave it at that.
3) The grind. I am with whomever stated that they dreaded their alarm going off. Every day is a monumental task - the second you drive your car onto school property, you have 100 things that all happen at once. When I taught, I lived weekend to weekend and break to break. Again, it takes a special person to appreciate and cherish their teaching job Monday-Friday. I was not that person.
Lastly, working in sales, I very much appreciate free market economics which seemed absent in the public schools in which I taught. If I do a good job and treat my customers well, they treat me well. If I do poorly, my customers will stop buying my product and I will be fired. It really is as simple as that. That simplicity and elegance is 100% absent in a public school.
I hope the above both encourages and discourages anyone thinking about a teaching career.
Also, lets cut the horsesh*t with the summers off discussion. Public schools have summers off, period. Its not worth debating. There is not merit or deserving factors, its just the way it is.