Do I have to accept everything the Orthodox Church teaches to convert?

Yes, and that was one of the hard claims. The Orthodox Church says, we don't really care what your interpretation is. The church has one theology, and to become Orthodox you have to follow that one theology. You can't keep your hodgepodge amalgamation of theology that you think is true. At my university, even the professors in the religious department, all Protestants, couldn't agree on a commonality of theology.

Protestantism claims we all believe in the essentials, but what are the essentials? St Paul never lays that out. Take baptism: there's no consistent view within Protestantism. Some baptize babies, some don't, some do triple immersion, some single immersion in Jesus' name, and they don't even view baptism as being for the remission of sins, though that's what Christ teaches in the Gospels and what's affirmed in the Nicene Creed.

So I had this titanic shift in my thinking: Orthodoxy claims an authority from Christ through the apostles, easily documented in church history and the councils, and here I am in outer space doing my own thing alongside everybody else doing their own thing. How hard is it to give up being a little pope in my own world with my own interpretations? I realized that to become Orthodox I didn't have to change a little bit. I had to change a lot. And the Orthodox Church was not going to change for me.