Need input for career change

Almost every LE Agency is facing a manpower
shortage. If you get the recruit you want with the intelligence and talent and physical
skills then he/she usually moves on after a few years because of all the stuff 4v50 gary
said. It is a demanding job that requires a
commitment that few nowadays are willing to give. It is a meatgrinder. I'd say stay out
of it for your famlies sake unless your willing to pay the price. It's never like they show on TV.
 
Tough one. All I can do is give you my advice, based upon my experience.

Do it.

I'm 53. I've had twelve jobs since high school; ten since college; eight since grad school. This includes great jobs like the Navy (flew with the fleet; they retired me kicking and screaming from the Reserves after 28 years); Nightmare on Elm Street- awful jobs (bosses who love public humiliation and physical threats, jobs that punish you for being out sick with pneumonia), and everything in between. Been fired once; left ten times on my own. Tried airline flying. Good bennies, good pay, flying neat stuff, keen airline uniform. After the checkride, they wanted me to take a schedule that would have meant not seeing my wife for five months. Took me about one and a half seconds to quit.

My philosphy has been -- and my wife, God bless her, agrees -- that if a job meets your basic requirements for money and benefits, and you want to give it a try, GO for it.

Believe me, the older you get, you find that the bitterest things in life aren't the crappy things that happened to you when you did X, or when someone else did Y. The bitterest things are the chances you were afraid to take and wonder about for the rest of your life. And wonder. And wonder.

At 28 you have the time to try new things. Go for it.

After twelve jobs I teach flying on weekends, write for a magazine during the week, go to the range when I can, take in stray, limping cats (current count: 8), and try to enjoy my family as much as possible. Why not try something that looks great? All you can do is fall on your face, get up, and try something else. Twenty eight is too early to "retire."

woodit
 
Danny, I also endorse the reserve officer route. I don't think there is any such thing as the perfect job that makes a person jump out of bed every morning and rush off to work. Dreams are fine as long as they are based in reality. Believe me, you will get real tired of working nights, weekends, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, missisng school plays and just about any other family activity there is. What about your children? Is it their dream to only see their father when his shift allows? Your obligation is to your family which means that in most cases your dreams go on hold. Police work will place you in a situation where you run a much higher risk of serious injury or death. How would your family do without you? Money, contrary to what some want you to believe, is very important in a marriage. If it is in short supply all kind so marital problems will come about. Working shift will put much more stress on your wife. There will be things that should not be her responsibility to manage but she will have to do it because you will be at work or sleeping. She will have to be a very understanding and strong woman to put up that for 20 plus years. Check out the divorce rate for LEOs. It far higher than most other professions. If you were a single man, I would tell you to go for it.
 
Some excellent points. I got a phone call last night. My interview is Monday afternoon. I meet with the command staff and I'm pretty sure this is the point that they offer me the job. Guess it's going to be a long weekend....

Thanks for all the input. I'll keep you posted.

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"Some people spend an entire liftime wondering if they made a difference. Marines don't have that problem."
Semper Fi
 
Work is something that you do to get someone elses money so that you can do the things that you find necessary or interesting.

The more money you make, the sooner you can stop working.

It's that simple.

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You have to be there when it's all over. Otherwise you can't say "I told you so."

Better days to be,

Ed
 
Ed, I am going to save that quote, it's that good.

Maybe inadvertently, you make a case for LE work - a decent pension after 20 years is not something I have to look forward to in my line of work. OTOH, one could probably make twice as much money with half the grief over 20 years staying with a tech field as opposed to LE.
 
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