Most people don't like me saying this because it attacks their softness.
People can dislike things you say for reasons that are not, "They're soft." That's an easy way to dismiss criticism of your statements.
Some people do fold in their first year, and honestly I think it has a lot to do with how much education programs focus on the straight-up teaching aspect ("let's make foldables! Let's create lesson plans!") without preparing teachers for the stuff on the back end, which is a lot of what drives people out early.
Remember that the people most likely to come on here and talk about their first year are people looking for support; it isn't a natural instinct of most people to come on and say, "I'm loving everything!" The people who are enjoying their first years of teaching are just not as visible to you on the sub, but it doesn't mean they don't exist.
most people need to learn to put up their sleeves and change things they'd like to be different.
In some cases, yes. But rolling up sleeves doesn't change the homes students come from, which has a huge impact on the school environment and is the source of a LOT of the problems that lead people to quit teaching (or leave their school). I had a 6th grade girl who was illiterate put into my social studies class. Her mother was 26 years old and had two other kids, would call and scream at the admins and us when her daughter went home and would tell her anything negative happened or she was held accountable for her behavior, etc. What did I do? I rolled those sleeves up and tried to teach her how to read on lunch breaks and my planning period. She would spend that time eating plastic bracelets or crying. She should be evaluated for ED, right? Well her mom didn't want that, so the admin wouldn't allow it. I rolled up my sleeves and fed her breakfast in the morning because she claimed she wasn't fed at home; I had baby wipes in my desk to give her when she would come in smelling like shit because she wasn't made to bathe at home and her clothes smelled awful. She stole from teachers' purses (never mine, because I wasn't foolish enough to bring anything of value into that school). The crown jewel of my time with this student-- and she was in my homeroom so I was always given her back when other teachers didn't want to deal with her biting other kids or stealing from their lockers-- was when she came to school with a giant welt across her face because her mom had beaten her with a belt and caught her with the buckle. I called CPS. I was screamed at by the admins for doing this (which I'm legally required to do, and I told them as much, but it didn't stop the bitch session from them), and nothing was done. I called again when she came to school and showed kids different sexual positions and claimed she'd learned them from watching porn at home (she referenced redtube by name) and refused to say who showed it to her. Nothing done again. Her mother didn't like my "meddling" (she knew better than to come at me personally for any of this because I wouldn't have been as nice as the admins were) so she changed schools and now she's somewhere where no one knows what her home life is--which is neglect and abuse. She probably won't ever learn how to read.
The reason I give you that example is that there are a LOT of things teachers cannot change. You can try, and you can do everything you can do at school to make a kid successful, but it often ends up a wash. The girl I told you about is an extreme case because of the abuse, but the poverty was rampant where I taught and you can't undo kids living with a single parent with two jobs who never finished school themselves, who doesn't think their kid should have to do homework because they're watching siblings all night. Sleeves can be rolled up all day, and there's a limit to what you can do.
Anyhow, just don't be too cocky before you've had to be the person responsible for shitshows like this for a few years. Granted-- many teachers work in great schools without these problems, so this isn't necessarily something you'll face. But don't dismiss the issues people have with teaching by saying it's all just laziness. I thought that too when I went back to college to get my teaching license. "Whiners who don't know what it's like to work in a year-round job," I said to myself, sure that hard work could solve all the problems. I had served in the military and gone to Iraq before I started school; I worked full time while I went to college and managed a 3.7 GPA. My student teaching evals were glowing. I was no stranger to hard work and doing whatever it took to get shit done.
Reality humbled me when I started teaching full time. The problem is that hard work doesn't solve the lion's share of problems. You can do everything right and it can still be a nightmare. Your performance is tied to so many variables. Roll your sleeves up and plunge your hands into a trough of shit and tell me how your hard work turns that into gold.
Some schools are just awful. I'm so soft that I ended up leaving middle school and I now work in a prison as a teacher instead. You couldn't pay me enough to go back to some of the schools I worked at before I switched to working with adults.
Good luck in your career. I didn't write all this to attack you. I wrote it because I see my own early cockiness in you and I wonder if someone could have spared me the kick in the gut that reality delivered me when I started teaching full time. I probably wouldn't have listened, but I've got to try :)