Career options were teach or research, and I went for the latter. I.e. publish or perish. Did enjoy doing guest lectures though for everything from 4th graders to graduate levels. After a career's exposure to kids, if teaching was mandated, it would be grade school or college with nothing in between. With rare exceptions, middle and high schoolers are just too cool to display interest. Quite rewarding with the little guys though to see the lights come on with a realization of "wow, that's how that works." If college, I think the career courses would be most rewarding, as one would be dealing solely with kids that wanted to be there. Core courses, needed to sort of round one out would be the pits. I can not imagine sitting down to grade 200 English compositions.
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One of the worst for me was Pre-Calculus Algebra. The audience was largely populated by students thinking "I know this stuff already" and "The SAT/ACT/Departmental Placement exam is bogus" and they were chafing at not being in calculus. This resulted in many rude awakenings when the first test exposed incompetence born of lax study and preparation.
