It was nice to be there for a while, but I eventually entered reality and determined that many professors really didn't love teaching and many students really weren't in school to soak up as much knowledge as possible. Don't get me wrong, there are many amazing teachers out there and just as many students who truly are passionate about learning. But I had to face the facts and accept that these people are not the norm. I learned that academia is NOT the environment that I thought - it is not an environment in which teachers are given the freedom to study new and interesting scientific topics in empirically sound ways. What I learned was that academia is a difficult environment in which to learn and even more difficult to teach.
Teachers struggle, students struggle, and everyone loses.
And yet I wanted so much to teach and help students see how great the science of Psychology really is. So, I decided against pursuing faculty jobs further. I knew there had to be a better way. I always believed that if you make learning fun, people will want to do it more often. This is what I had to base my future upon.