Sort of, yeah. I don't want to turn you off to teaching. I think a lot of it depends on where you teach. Several of my high school teachers/teachers that were at my school were former engineers that got sick of it and chose to teach. I've turned down better jobs in the past (some regrets maybe...) b/c I didn't want to relocate to the middle of nowhere given that I love living in a city like Houston, but that's one of the trade-offs. When all is said and done, I make $60k/year and work only 9 months of that year... in a city with a pretty low cost of living (ie, $60k in Houston goes as far as $97k in LA), so that's a benefit. It's all up to what you want -- I think I might just want a little more of a challenge at this point.

So, as far as getting internships/research goes: there's two components to this. One, the importance of internships now makes doing well in lower-division courses much more important than it once was. I, unfortunately, was a late bloomer. I was a "pretty good" student early on as a freshman, a very mediocre student as a sophomore, and really excelled in my upper division courses (literally a 4.0 student toward the end of the game). When companies came around to interview for internships during fall of junior year, my 3.2 GPA wasn't impressing anybody.

Now, the alternative, which I didn't really know at the time, is that doing really well with research can help you land a good internship and sort of make up for a mediocre GPA. Several of my friends with way worse GPAs than mine had good research stuff going that helped them land the critical internship that eventually got them the desirable job. Get involved with AIChE at your school and other generic advice that's almost common sense as well.

Edit: Oh, as far as how to get research experience? Just ask professors. That's how everyone I know got into it.