OK, no weekend off for years.
No dayshift for years.
You don't see your old buddies or a lot of your relatives anymore.
Your wife or your girlfriend leave you because they're tired of not having a normal social life with you.
If you're married, you go into it together. Your significant other must understand the commitment you are making and it must be made together. There'll be a lot of lonely nights without you. Plenty of worrying whether your footsteps approach your door as you return home. Or perhaps a solemn knock and with a uniformed officer giving reporting your death or injury.
Then there's the sickening parts of the job. Running of out rubber gloves and finding out the guy you're frisking has wet pants, and it's not the rain. Having the to deal with the drunks or transients whose smell alone makes your eyes water. Getting stuck with a dirty needle. Endless spousal abuse reports that make you want to tear some guy's head off. The swelling anger when you find an abused child or an abandoned baby.
It's not the TV stuff where you meet clean people and pretty women.
I've talked with a lot of cops from throughout the world. A lot of us get into it because of some notion of serving mankind. Then we reach middle age and find that we have no job skills and can't get out! It's not all that bad and you become instant middle class; but it certainly isn't the stuff the media makes it out to be. If you go into it, go into it with open eyes and never ever leave school. Keep getting those degrees because you may just want to go private someday.
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Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt
No dayshift for years.
You don't see your old buddies or a lot of your relatives anymore.
Your wife or your girlfriend leave you because they're tired of not having a normal social life with you.
If you're married, you go into it together. Your significant other must understand the commitment you are making and it must be made together. There'll be a lot of lonely nights without you. Plenty of worrying whether your footsteps approach your door as you return home. Or perhaps a solemn knock and with a uniformed officer giving reporting your death or injury.
Then there's the sickening parts of the job. Running of out rubber gloves and finding out the guy you're frisking has wet pants, and it's not the rain. Having the to deal with the drunks or transients whose smell alone makes your eyes water. Getting stuck with a dirty needle. Endless spousal abuse reports that make you want to tear some guy's head off. The swelling anger when you find an abused child or an abandoned baby.
It's not the TV stuff where you meet clean people and pretty women.
I've talked with a lot of cops from throughout the world. A lot of us get into it because of some notion of serving mankind. Then we reach middle age and find that we have no job skills and can't get out! It's not all that bad and you become instant middle class; but it certainly isn't the stuff the media makes it out to be. If you go into it, go into it with open eyes and never ever leave school. Keep getting those degrees because you may just want to go private someday.
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Vigilantibus et non dormientibus jura subveniunt