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It's a very long road to become a professor, you must have a PhD in your field. You will go to graduate school and teach and take classes simultaneously, which leaves room for sleeping, and studying. Sometimes eating.
Then you need to take a bunch of examinations, which can be extremely difficult. After that you need to publish a dissertation, which is a paper with original research about something in your field, and it takes people YEARS to write these papers, they're typically hundreds of pages in length. Once that is published, you need to build up solid credentials if you haven't already, if you want to get hired at a good university.
Lately universities have been getting rid of long term professors and have been hiring short term ones. Professors can have "tenure" at universities, which guarantees their job after working for 7 years. Many people have difficulty lasting this long without being let go, and if you want the best money you need to go to the best colleges, so you need to be really unique and intelligent.
If you are lucky enough to land a tenured job, the lifestyle can be pretty good, you will teach class 15 hours a week, do research, and have office hours a couple hours a week. The pay is mostly above average, but depending on your subject and university it can vary. The road is long and hard, and once you have your PhD there are no guarantees, but it can be a good life if you're determined! Less than 1% of Americans hold PhD's, so don't kid yourself about the difficulty!
Hope this helped!
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