You need to be interested in people and their cultures, be versatile and open minded. I would recommend this career and if I had to do it again, I'd still choose it. The pros: it helps you to know more about the world and its peoples, appreciate the outside world other than just yours. cons: you may need to be adventurous sometimes, trying out new things for you to understand them better.
this is an interesting carrier that calls for a lot of reading and observation. the world has more variety than we will ever see.
College teacher of Italian I would rank it 8 out of 10 I am an adjunct faculty member, not a full-time professor. This means less money and no job security - I am hired by the semester - but it also means I do not have to attend boring faculty meetings or spend time on any administrative chores. I just come in, teach my class, and go home. The pay is very good if you figure it by the hour (I receive about $200/week for teaching 3 hours a week, plus grading, lesson plans, etc.) but you have to teach several courses per semester to make decent money. But sometimes I can't believe I have such a great job, teaching a subject I love. (It also means I will never forget the Italian which I learned in school, which happens to almost everyone who studies a foreign language, if there is no way to keep up with it.) I've also had 2 (so far) all-expense paid trips to Italy with groups of students for which I was very well-paid. Grading exams & compositions is the biggest drawback -- NOT FUN! This past semester I taught 7 courses at 3 different universities and had 150 final exams to grade - average 11 pages each - which all had to be graded the same week. It took about 15-20 minutes PER exam...I repeat, NOT FUN! Aside from that it's a great job and I get to meet lots of fun & interesting students.