Former high school teacher here. I've had many jobs over the years, from manual labor to sales to hospitality to bureaucracy to professional, degreed, white-collar work. Teaching was the hardest. It was worse than selling vacuum cleaners door to door, cleaning out the gut tank at the fish plant, or working for a truly toxic boss. One reason: you aren't treated well by people at every level. Students, parents, admins, and even other teachers. At times, this borders on abuse. My own behavior wasn't always that great, because I often felt angry without having a way to process it. I became, consciously and without remorse, passive-aggressive toward the end. It felt like I was trapped into being a shining beacon of wonderfulness to make up for the zero-consequence bad behavior of others. Of course, I was imperfect because, guess what, no one is perfect--not even teachers, who seem to be held to that standard on a regular basis! It's a no-win situation and no matter how much you love kids or want to make the world better, eventually most people who can, leave. The stats don't lie...and the "quitters" are people who wanted to be teachers, put lots of time and money into it, and often have few other viable career choices with their education degrees. They still leave.