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Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But few will admit enjoying it, for fear of being perceived as unserious about research. It’s odd, since the three standard categories of academic life (teaching, research, and service/administration) are so varied and have so much in common.It’s normal to divide academic work into three categories. They differ in their visibility, reward structure, and prestige. Research sits at the top of the pile. In the most highly valued, and it plays the greatest role in hiring, promotions, funding, and other forms of recognition. Teaching comes next. It’s something that everybody understands that professors do. Everybody understands that it’s necessary and useful, but it’s less highly valued, and being a star in the classroom gets little recognition, and even arouses some suspicion. ‘Service’ or ‘administration’ is a catch-all for pretty much everything else. It covers a lot of different things. It is widely looked down upon as something between a necessary evil and a nuisance, which stands in the way of “real work” (= research). When done well, it is often warmly appreciated, but generally on a local level and without much visibility or lasting recognition.There’s really a lot of overlap between the three areas. All require creative problem solving and thinking on your feet. All require people skills, sometimes dealing with difficult or obstructive people. Even the most solitary forms of research require you to work with other humans sooner or later. And collaboration is the default in most areas of research nowadays, whether explicitly or implicitly. All require effective communication. All require learning new things. And all sometimes force you to deal with bizarre rules.There are frustrations in all areas. Nobody likes doing things that seem like pointless busy-work. Nobody likes doing things that are unlikely to be valued or appreciated. Few people enjoy delivering or receiving bad news. There’s busy work involved in doing those extra analyses that the reviewer demanded in order to get your paper accepted. I’ve never heard anybody say that they enjoyed dealing with cases of academic dishonesty in their classes. And nobody gets a thrill out of filling out forms and reports that are unlikely to ever be read. (My university used to have a faculty evaluation form that we would fill out every year that included checkboxes for any major prizes that we might have won. Every year I had to apologetically check the box that said that, unfortunately, I had yet again failed to win a Nobel Prize.)There are also moments of great satisfaction in all areas. In research it can come in making a discovery, or explaining it well, or in receiving recognition for it (via a publication, or an appreciative audience, or many other ways). Or it can come through identifying a problem that isn’t yet solved but with your reach. In teaching it comes from seeing students make progress. Often the greatest satisfaction comes not from the most talented students, but from the ones who are benefiting the most. In administration it also comes from doing things that make a difference: finding a creative solution to an organizational or funding challenge; finding an agreeable resolution to a disagreement; creating new opportunities that benefit students, colleagues, or the public. And in each case there are many other examples.A big difference between research, teaching, and service/admin is that they involve working with different sets of people, and you have different levels of control over who you work with. In research you get to choose the community of peers that you associate with, and you can choose to be more or less closely connected with them. They might include colleagues or students from your institutions, or they might all be far away. This community tends to be stable across many years, and often builds on connections that you made as a graduate student. In teaching you generally don’t get to choose who enrolls in your classes, and there’s variation in how much choice you have in who you serve in an advising role. This community changes faster: there are some students who you barely get to know before the semester is over; there are others who you get to know over the course of a few years. All at least have a passing interest in your expertise (well, sometimes a grudging disinterest is as good as it gets). In service/admin it is a huge mix. You could be working with people who you’ve worked with productively over many years. Or you could be thrown together with people who you’ve never met, who resent being with you as much as your worst students, and who have an even bigger sense of entitlement than those students.There’s also a big difference in the preparation that you get for different types of work. A PhD is supposed to prepare you to be an expert researcher, and most people spend decades building on that training. Professors sometimes receive training in teaching, but it’s always far less than the training they receive in research. And training in the skills needed for other activities is almost non-existent. You’re unlikely to be hired as a professor if you don’t have demonstrated talent as a researchers. You’re supposed to show skills in teaching, but accommodations will be made if you’re a great researcher. But skills in other areas are rarely considered in hiring, so there are many people who are really not very good beyond research and teaching, or who actively cultivate being bad at administration, as a way of avoiding it. Needing to work with people like that contributes to the distaste that many feel for admin.Research is often regarded as the most noble calling of a professor. It involves the pursuit of truth, the life of the mind, unconnected from trivial worldly concerns. That’s a little ironic, given that it’s the most rewarded academic pursuit, the one that leads to the greatest personal acclaim, remuneration, and overall clout. In some respects, other aspects of academic life that are necessary but unheralded are noble.Personally, I enjoy all three areas. I find certain aspects of all of them annoying, and I find other aspects of each of them very satisfying. There are some aspects of research that I enjoy a lot less enjoyable than some aspects of administration. They are all very varied. I’m perhaps fortunate that I mostly really like the people who I work with in teaching, research, and administration, and I’m sure that contributes to overall satisfaction. Professors who don’t get along with their institutional colleagues are less likely to enjoy admin. And professors who feel out of place in their research community but get along with their institutional colleagues might find more satisfaction in administration. But they might be reluctant to admit that, as there is a certain stigma associated with spending more time on administration, as it is often regarded as conceding failure in research.The values surrounding research, teaching, and administration/service are heavily influenced by academic acculturation. Professors start their academic life as research students, in an environment where little other than research matters. Some of the strongest peer connections are established at the same time, and they are to people who you remain connected to largely via research, and who are mostly aware only of what you do in research. Your graduate school buddies generally have no idea how you are as a teacher, and don’t even know whether you spend much of your time in administration. The labels don’t help either. The terms “administration” and “service” have neutral to negative connotations, and don’t convey any need for creativity or talent. Ironically, most academics also strongly support the notion of academic self-governance, but they often resent the responsibilities that come with that.

God, do I absolutely hate what they did with this character. Hate hate hate hate hate.And what they did is such a Star Trek thing to do, too.Basically what happened with Boothby was this: They introduced a great character that had a singular importance in the character development of one specific person (Captain Picard), then they got really lazy with writing, and ended up exploiting the character to trigger ‘member berries.Here is how it all went down.Captain Picard and BoothbyBoothby is first mentioned in the Season 4 episode “Final Mission,” which is a character development episode that has Wesley Crusher heading off to Starfleet Academy. Captain Picard is supposed to be mediating a mining dispute somewhere, so they end up on a shuttle together, where they get a chance to talk.In one exchange, Picard tells Wesley that he is envious of the fact that he is just beginning his adventure. He urges Wesley to seek out a man — the aforementioned Boothby — and get to know him, because he is the "wisest man at the Academy." When Wesley asks what he teaches, Picard answers, "He's the groundskeeper."It is a nice little exchange that is far less about Boothby the person, and far more about Picard. Here, we learn that Picard sees wisdom and value in the most unexpected of places, and treasured a relationship with what was likely intended to be a relatively unknown, anonymous worker on the Starfleet Academy grounds. This is a bit of very real humanity and character development.Then, the next season Wesley returns to the Enterprise in the episode The Game, which links him up with a very young and super hot Ashley Judd, who played Ensign Robin Lefler.Well done, Wesley.In any event, once on board he sits down and has tea with Picard (Earl Grey, probably pretty hot I would guess). Wesley tells Picard of his experiences at the Academy, including his having met and talked to Boothby, as Picard had suggested.In a somewhat humorous exchange, Picard speculates that Boothby must have told him some stories about his old Academy days, after which Wesley crushes him by telling him that he didn’t remember Picard at all. Until, that is, he showed him an old yearbook and the old codger came around. Ultimately he was proud of Picard for being Captain of the Enterprise.Once again, the point of the Boothby character here was to provide further character development for Picard, and a little bit for Wesley. Picard was apparently caught by Boothby carving the initials “A.F.” into a prized elm tree, and he reveals that he almost failed organic chemistry because of the subject of his amorous tree carving.This shows us that Picard was hardly a rule following square in his youth, as one might assume, but did occasionally get into trouble and act out in ways very common to young people. He was in love with a girl, he nearly failed a class — this all makes him much more human and interesting.Again, this wasn’t about Boothby at all, the character — still not seen on camera — was just a vehicle for character development.Then we get to The First Duty.A truly excellent episode of The Next Generation all around, it explores questions of personal integrity and truth. In this episode, Wesley is involved in a training accident while flying a shuttle for Nova Squadron at Starfleet Academy. The accident kills one of his friends and squadron mates, and the Academy calls a hearing to look into the causes of the crash.Picard arrives, and ends up starting his own investigation into what happened. As it progresses, Picard ends up seeking out Boothby, the now elderly groundskeeper to talk. He asks if Boothby knew the boy who was killed, and he admits that he knew not only him, but all of the pilots.He then tells Picard that after Nova Squadron won the Rigel Cup, the other students treated them like they were gods, and that it was a difficult thing to live up to. Boothby also says that Nova Squadron would do anything for the team leader, Nicolas Locarno, even if it meant "going right over a cliff."This proves to be the nugget of information that leads Picard down the pathway that ultimately has him discovering that the accident was due to the cadets practicing an outlawed (and very dangerous) maneuver. Boothby put him on the path to understanding that Wesley and the surviving pilots were lying to the committee evaluating the incident.Again, Boothby is a nice addition here, serving as a trusted old confidant of Picard. He is someone who was there and can provide sage advice and perspective, to help guide his old friend to the truth. He is no one special here — he’s just a groundskeeper, and he is continually made more interesting by the fact that Picard seeks him out and values his counsel, while the rest of the Starfleet brass seem to not even be aware of his existence.This makes Boothby the perfect side character, and makes him feel real. If he was somehow a celebrity on campus and everyone knew him, everyone went to him for advice the same way Picard did, and everyone considered him their own personal Gandalf, than Picard’s interaction with him wouldn’t be all that special or remarkable.Unfortunately, that was what Boothby was about to become.How Star Trek Voyager Ruined BoothbyThe two passing references and the one physical appearance was all that Boothby was in The Next Generation. He had served his purpose, and he was what he was: a simple gardener on the Starfleet Academy grounds who had a special relationship with Picard, and helped him grow in wisdom. They didn’t feel the need to do anything more with him.But everyone loved the storyline, and absolutely everyone loved Ray Walston’s performance as Boothby. So there was a lot of positive feeling about that.Enter: Star Trek VoyagerLook, I like Voyager a lot. I’ve got plenty of complaints, of course, and I do think there are several things that could have been done to make the show more compelling, but still it was Star Trek, and I liked the show.But Voyager was very obviously less popular than The Next Generation and even Deep Space Nine. It was off network television, its ratings were much lower, and the show would routinely try to find ways of riding the coattails of its more popular predecessors to try to juice viewership.It was kind of sad and pathetic to watch, honestly. To me, it was a statement about how little faith they had in the show, the actors, and the stories on Voyager, because they constantly had to “reach back to the past” to more popular Trek franchises, hoping that popularity from them would rub off on them.And it happened a lot.They featured Riker in the episode “Death Wish”:Sulu (and Kang with him) in the episode “Flashback”:Two Ferengi named Arridor and Kol, who were minor characters in The Next Generation episode "The Price,” were featured in the Voyager episode "False Profits”:And of course, they turned Reginald Barclay from The Next Generation into a central figure in Voyager, responsible for their direct link home. He appeared for six episodes, including one where Diana Troi shows up and is apparently still counseling him for some reason:Do you ‘member?All of these tactics are not-so-subtle ways of trying to make Star Trek fans — who had kind of fallen away from the franchise in the spin-offs — remember the good old days. This would get them to watch an episode of Voyager in the hopes that these lost fans would like it, be reminded of the Star Trek they used to love, and then continue to watch Voyager after the guest star left.The problem, of course, is that these tactics don’t really work. It is good for a quick little boost in ratings for an episode or two, but that’s about it. If you are writing a show and you rely on stuff like this, there is no way it ever results in either a creative or a ratings triumph. And again, it betrays a lack of confidence in the show itself, really.But those guest stars I just listed weren’t the only ones. They did this a lot, and they did it with a lot of minor characters. And they did it for the same reason… to tickle your ‘member berries.Which brings us to Boothby.Boothby was featured on two episodes of Voyager — “In the Flesh” and “The Flight” — both of which were intended to satisfy this singular purpose of triggering your familiarity, rather than (as was the case in The Next Generation) for any logical storytelling reason.In “In the Flesh,” Voyager finds a station containing a disturbingly accurate re-creation of Starfleet Command and Starfleet Academy, constructed by Species 8472.And wouldn’t you know it? This recreation features a replicant of Boothby! And not only a replicant of him, but Boothby is basically the main character of the episode, and the leader of the group that is at the faux Academy.All for the reference. All for the ‘member berries.As stupid as this is, it gets worse. They can’t just have Boothby serve that purpose alone. Oh no. Instead, they need to give our heroes on Voyager their own “Boothby stories” similar to Picard’s.Janeway, for instance was given a gift by the replicant Boothby at the end of the episode — it was a large genetically-engineered rose, just like the ones the real Boothby used to give her when she was at the Academy.Furthermore, a member of Species 8472 impersonating Valerie Archer noted to Chakotay that "half the Captains in Starfleet wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for Boothby.”So now Boothby is apparently everyone’s academic advisor?And the stupidity doesn’t stop just in this episode.Next there was (the awful) Voyager episode “The Fight,” where Voyager is caught in "chaotic space," an area where the laws of physics are in a state of flux, and Chakotay begins to hear and see things.Want to guess about one of the things he sees?Yup. Boothby.In this episode, we learn that Chakotay is a boxer, and fought at the Academy. In a flashback, we see him training in a holodeck simulation, and in his corner is Boothby, who apparently used to coach him as a cadet. Throughout the episode, he experiences a series of hallucinations while on a vision quest, which were induced by a group of aliens trying to communicate with him telepathically. One of those hallucinations is Boothby, who continually talks to him.So… he is the captain whisperer, everyone’s advisor, and he is a boxing coach too I guess. Ugh.And this isn’t where it ends, either. He has appeared or was talked about in a ton of other Star Trek media, including a lot of books, and Star Trek Online.But it isn't just where he appeared that is the problem…to they actually considered using him in more incredibly stupid ways. In TNG, for instance, Ronald Moore considered having Boothby appear in the episode “Journey’s End” which would have revealed that Boothby was in fact The Traveler in disguise, which would have been the stupidest plot twist of all time.Open my wrists. I beg you.Okay so you’re asking yourself about now — so what?Why do I care at all about this? He’s just a minor character, people liked him, so the writers expanded his story and made more out of him for the fans.I care about this because what happened to Boothby is a sign of what was the ultimate decline in imagination and storytelling within the Star Trek universe. What they did to him was indicative of why the franchise went into such a steep decline, particularly through Voyager and then later Enterprise.The Next Generation wasn’t perfect, and contained a lot of really bad plots, terrible characters, and stupid episodes. And yet, the reason it was such a tremendously important show was because at its best, it was an intelligent, well written show that managed to be thoughtful, do quality character development (in a non-arc based episodic show, which is crazy) and maintain forward momentum with creativity.More importantly, they seemed to have a sense back then of when not to overdo something.Boothby was a phenomenal character in his three references and appearances in The Next Generation. He felt pretty real, and the relationship he had with Picard was special.To me, it was kind of like the movie Rudy, when Rudy befriended Fortune, head groundskeeper at Notre Dame stadium. Fortune was not everyone’s life coach — he was a reasonably anonymous, forgotten man who was smart and had things to teach the young man.The beauty of the relationship is that “wisdom can be found in the most unlikely of places” and it says something about both Rudy as well as Fortune that they came together in some way. Rudy was discounted and ignored, but had big dreams, and he was helped along on his journey by the most unlikely of people — a groundskeeper who was unknown and unvalued.It would have cheapened the whole thing significantly if somehow every Notre Dame football player was going down to see the groundskeeper to get life advice from him. I mean, how special would Rudy’s relationship with him be if suddenly everyone had the same relationship? Why should I care, then, about any of it?Same with Boothby. The fact that Picard — an elite, ambitious, prodigiously talented dreamer — would seek, and ultimately find guidance, support and perspective from a simple groundskeeper was a great bit of character development.It told us that Picard is open — he doesn’t judge a person’s worth by their title, rank, credentials or status. He finds value in places other people would ignore. He is also interested in truly learning about life, rather than simply satisfying academic requirements and jumping through the proper hoops to graduate.He can form deep personal bonds with unexpected people, and understands that life experience is of particular importance in his own journey of self-discovery.In other words, by seeing who and what Picard values, it tells us things about Picard.All of that is destroyed if Boothby is some universally applicable sage cadet confidante, central to the careers of every frigging Starfleet Captain in the Federation. He used to give Janeway roses? He coached Chakotay in boxing? Seriously?If all of that is true, then Picard’s relationship with the man is not particularly interesting or special at all. It tells us nothing about him any longer, and in fact might imply that Picard was just overly-ambitious and knew that a relationship with this person might be a ticket to future career success.The overuse and over-reliance on the character was so off-putting to me that I half expected there to be some kind of stupid time travel episode of Enterprise, where Boothby ended up meeting Captain Archer and giving him important advice on something.So, in the end, they took what was a great, smart, thoughtful, well crafted minor character, and exploited him, turning him into a worthless cartoon character.And that is why I hate what they did to him.

I love Sara Antunovich's answer, and she's a real-world friend of mine, but I'd also like to attempt to give an overview of what "the standard path" is. This is basically the equivalent of saying that in the real world you need to have gone to the right schools and gotten the right internships/entry-level jobs to make it to the top of any field. Of course that's not true, but it's a base-line against which you're judged.Here's a step-by-step, first in tl;dr form, and then with details on curriculum, etc. Obviously some people enter the path late or skip one level or more.Step One: A BM from a top conservatory. Odds of admission at this level are about 10%.Step Two: An MM from a top conservatory. Likewise, the odds of admission at this level are about 10%.Step Three (optional but increasingly standard): An artist diploma or performance certificate from a top conservatory. The odds of admission drop to 2-3% or less.Step Four: Young Artist Programs. The odds of admission are in the 0.5%-5% range, though the applicant pool is considerably more accomplished than at other levels.Step Five: Major Competition Victories. The odds of winning are less than 0.5% at this level, despite mostly being selected from people who have already passed the above steps.Step Six: Get Management. I have no idea how competitive this is by percentage, and the data is not published. Suffice it to say, quite competitive.Step Seven: Work your way up from house to house, singing larger and larger roles, hopefully impressing people along the way. Likewise no data, and likewise competitiveStep Eight: Be in the right place at the right time.Obviously when you start putting all of the odds of getting to the next step together, you see just how incredibly competitive it is to acquire all of these steps. Many of the big stars of today are missing a number of these steps, for this reason, but on the whole I think the impression is accurate of an incredibly challenging ladder to climb. Here are details on each step...Step One: A BM from a top conservatory.a) Get into a top conservatory (this is hard, particularly when you're 17-18 years old and are just discovering your voice)b) Take a year of German language, a year of Italian language, and a year of French language. Also study these languages separately, on your own, because everyone knows a year isn't enough, even for a bachelors.c) Take a year of German diction, a year of Italian diction, a year of a French diction, and a year of English diction. I know it sounds like you shouldn't need English diction, and like diction and language should be redundant with one another. This couldn't be further from the truth. Opera singers need to be able to convincingly sing Italian language in Italy without people thinking they're foreign. The diction is far more important to this even than the language. For this reason, singers will get tons more formalized diction training after their BMs.d) Four years of high-level music theorye) Four years of ear trainingf) Four years of dictation (the ability to hear a piece and write down exactly what you've heard)g) Piano lessons, as a second instrument.h) Four years of voice lessons (usually once a week, but since this is the central focus of the degree, conservatory opera students are thinking about this one hour a week constantly)i) Four years of vocal coachingj) Usually some performing, usually in small roles until they're more ready.Step Two: An MM from a top conservatory.a) Get into a top conservatory (this is still hard)b) More diction, usually one more year in each language.c) Usually at least another year of higher-level music theory, ear training, dictation, and piano.d) Two years of voice lessons, of course, still once a week, and likewise two more years of vocal coaching.e) Significantly more performing. By this point you're expected to be getting your first major roles.Step Three (optional but increasingly standard): An artist diploma or performance certificate from a top conservatory.a) Get into a top conservatory (at this level, many of the top programs pay you to go to school, and are thus incredibly competitive)b) Academic requirements at this point are minimal, but...c) Voice lessons and vocal coaching are more frequent at this level, totaling 4-5 hours a day in some programs, which is very intensive on the voice.d) Much more performing. By this level you're expected to be performing at least one major role each year.Step Four: Young Artist Programsa) These are jobs (sometimes for as short as a summer, sometimes up to three years in length) at which young singers work in the chorus and apprentice/cover/understudy established artists in lead roles.b) Usually, voice lessons are not provided, but huge amount of vocal coaching is given, to polish singers.c) Most importantly, this is the beginning of professional development for many, making their first contacts and learning from the established professionals in their repertoire.Step Five: Major Competition Victoriesa) International competitions, such as the Metropolitan National Council Auditions, Operalia, Cardiff Singer of the World, etc. are a big way for talent to be noticed.b) These competitions often involve working with and being evaluated by top artists, come with large amounts of prize money not to mention vital exposure.Step Six: Get ManagementThis is sort of an amorphous step, but at some point in there you'll want to be identified as a major talent by a top manager, and signed to their roster.Step Seven: Work your way up from house to house, singing larger and larger roles, hopefully impressing people along the way(This should be self-explanatory)Step Eight: Be in the right place at the right time.(likewise)