My dad told me not to be a teacher....I was bored with college and wanted to get out of the house while I still knew everything. Turns out I loved the work while I was young and single. Ten years later and married with kids, on call 24/7, not as much. It was still a good job though even though I made a lot less money than my pals in real estate, banking, tech etc. I was content that I had the prospect of a decent pension and job security. That lasted until the housing market and the dot com collapse when my buddies who were suddenly out of jobs after making 300k and up per year decided that I was making too much money and shouldn't have a pension because they didn't get one. Then the take-aways started happening......Now almost 30 years later it's just about time to get out.
I tell my kids to finish college while they still have a safety net with mom and dad, like I didn't, and stay away from local cop jobs. Get a degree and a job that won't tie you down with chains to one employer. A type of occupation where you actually NEED a college degree for the training that provides the ability to work in that field. Not something where a degree is just the price of admission. More importantly, I recruit other role models for my kids and get THEM to tell them these things, because it seems to have a lot more credibility when someone else tells them. You shouldn't need a degree to be a cop yet it's becoming more and more necessary to have one to be competitive in the field with regard to promotions, post retirement jobs, etc. I take this as a symptom of academia looking out for academia. Paying for college just to keep the machine going.
The job has been very good to me but my family and I put a lot into it as well. I earned every dime I ever took home and then some.
The famous Joe Friday "What Is A Policeman" speech on the Dragnet Episode known as "The Big Interrogation" pretty much sums it up without too much extra cornball. It's pretty timeless and is still true today.
Joe Friday, What it means to be a Police Officer - YouTube
There's a certain mystique about the job that's enticing for the first few years. This wears off in time. How much time depends on whether you work for a big city department or a smaller, less busy one, I think. And look at how many cop wannabes there are out there. You can see them on internet forums all over the place as well as your every day life. They don't make television series about accountants for a reason. Everybody thinks they know what policework is all about but it's one of those things you'll never "get" unless you're there, making a living at it, for a number of years. You don't "get" it by being a volunteer police reserve, you don't "get" it by hanging around cops at the bar listening to war stories and you don't "get" it by watching TV shows.
After a while, I enjoyed the feeling of having a backstage pass and a front row seat to the greatest show on earth and seeing and hearing things that nobody else got to see and hear. It was also amusing to hear others who were clueless, tell me about what my job was all about. It was good to be a part of this somewhat exclusive club. This has nothing to do with any "blue code of silence" nonsense but rather a camaraderie that most other occupations don't have.
Every reason that he gave to support his position proved to be true (low pay, terrible hours/off days,etc.). But, I still wouldn't swap the life experience that I gained working in this profession for the last 28 years.
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