This question originally appeared on Quora.
Answer below by Jay Wacker, former professor.
TL;DR: It's varied and requires a lot of different skills that I didn't learn in school.
I get to work on what I want to work on. I get to choose my own hours. But there are a lot of responsibilities beyond simply doing research and teaching. What these are depends on the university and field of study.
My life as a junior professor at Stanford (up for tenure in the fall) consists of the following.
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