It sounds like your girlfriend do not want you to go through the
frustration of hating your job after some time. Maybe she knows
someone who is stuck in such a job and is complaining all the
time.
Have you talked to enough people in different jobs to decide that
being in the police is really your dream job ? I did not. I thought
of teaching or police while in university and then chose
police.
The 9 months in academy was ok. Like army training but with law and
stuff thrown in. The job is quite different from TV portrayals.
Your first 2 years are definitely going to be in Investigation work
- tons and tons of paperwork, phone calls, interviews and more
paperwork.
You will almost never see action. You arrive at the scene hours
after. After everyone else. You work bad hours. You work all hours.
You get more depressed than divorce lawyers. Day in and day out,
you deal with loss, death, injury and hate. And no one appreciates
you. The complainant says you are slow, the defendent is abusive,
your boss says you are incompetent, and of course your girlfriend
wonders where you are all the time and why you prefer to sleep to
meeting her.
Promotion ? Forget it. You start with Inspector or Asst
Superintendent and then stay there for years. Your peers who are
scholars zoom past you with doing a bit of this and a bit of that
and before long, one of them is the commander of your division
while you are still doing whatever you have been doing since day
1.
Sorry for all the negative stuff - just want to go beyond the
"server the nation" and "help the weak" stuff. I did feel that I
learnt more about people and life during those years. Sort of an
accelerated maturing process.
