Read "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain and then decide if you want to follow that career path.
Bourdain's certainly not a role model, and I don't know that I'd go to him for advice
... but ...
I work with a guy who spent many years working in high end restaurants in the DC area, and he says Bourdain fairly accurately portrayed what it was like to work in that line of work. He's the one who got me to read that book. Most anyone I've met since who worked in that biz claims Bourdain nailed his description of "the life" as they saw it when they worked in high end restaurants.
My friend echoed what Bourdain offered as advice ... If you love to cook, cook for your friends and family. Don't work in a restaurant! If you want the nightly challenge of getting a tough job done, and have a "the show must go on" mentality, then maybe the restaurant business is for you.
My friend's point was that he spent most of his nights cranking out the two menu items he was responsible for. Over and over and over. The keys were speed and absolute consistancy of the finished product, and not a thing more. After a half year or so, he got to move up to two more challenging menu items ...
The guy I work with did love what he was doing, or moreso, the social aspects of the job / life that he had for many years ... but he has many stories of the brutal hours he put in and the work involved, and the life that centered around working until other people had gone home, and then socializing in the early morning hours with only other food service and bar workers for company. He's a technology planner with a regular day job these days ...
