Impressions of Notre Dame?

Pros:
absolutely gorgeous campus.
great program, very solid academic grounding and training in historical discipline.
tons of money to throw around - can fund trips to Europe, conferences, you name it.
excellent library and reference resources; even the librarians are medievalists by training.
at least one super-nice prof - I really liked Olivia Remie Constable.

Cons:
the campus is religious to the point of denying some things I've taken for granted as civil liberties (for instance, doesn't acknowledge the GLBT support group as an official club, no structure for women's support). grad students claim GS life isn't so bad, but they're not far from it. Many are married with kids (at 24!?!), and look down on the 'wild singles' in the history dept... but those history GS aren't at all wild! They're *normal* by my standards!

culture very much like E TX - very conservative and religious, super sports culture (esp football).

very, very few freethinkers with varied interests. no grad students I spoke with claim to do ANYTHING besides work (may go to Chicago, a 4 hour round trip, once every 8-12 weeks).

program seems to be very stressful, discourages language training to fluency. grad school's like that to some degree, but this seemed over the top. Severe attrition rate from older classes, better in recent years.

Teaching experience doesn't seem very in-depth, either. TA positions often just grading, possibly leading discussion sessions (rare); also TA-ships required during really difficult time of exams for MMS (2nd year) and PhD candidacy exams (3rd year). No seminars or provisions for learning methods of teaching, preparing classes, etc.

Their orchestra is terrible. :( :( :(
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Summary:
Hate to say it, but I'm not thrilled about this option. I think I've spent too much time in California and at Tech - being among brilliant freethinkers of all denominations has really caused me to mature in multiple ways. Had I gone straight from LHS to ND, maybe this would've been palatable: the religious references wherever you look, the lovely basilica oncampus, the strict hierarchies within the program and college, the more stringent regulations on behavior and visiting hours between the UG single-sex halls, the football and binge-drinking culture.

More importantly, so many GS said that this was what GS life was like everywhere else. No outside interests, work 24/7 on it, this is it. You go where you find a job, and you damn well enjoy it, and that's it. End of story.

I don't think I can live in that kind of tunnel. More and more I wonder if academia is where I should be. I believe more in education of others, dissemination of information, and the encouragement of freethinking than in glorified research. Do I like research? Sure. But I have multiple other interests outside of that. Why must I give those up?

And the final question: Should I really go to grad school next year, or try a job for a year or so to get a better picture of what I really want? I just feel so lost right now.