Confound it all!

Had a rather fun day yesterday shambling round the zoo dressed as a plague spirit, but I shall write a post about that in a few days when Ive uploaded the pic.

Today, unfortunatly, I want to rant. For years, I have studied Psychology and dreamt of a career profiling. Recently, I have been in touch with a few well-known and respected intellectual types who state their specialism is Offender Profiling and asked them for career advice, or at least some good literature to point me in the right direction. I shall quote the first line of the reply email I recieved of one of them...

"Profiling isn't really a career, and often doesn't pay!....My new book provides useful information on profiling".

Now please, answer this question for me. If it is not a career, which everyone keeps telling me it isn't, and if it doesn't pay...how on earth do they make a living out of it? It is kind of disheartening to listen to all these profilers, people who I aspire to work alongside one day, tell me it is not a career.

Firstly, I knew it wasn't a career in the UK anyway. The advice I asked for was how did they get involved in it. They all started their careers doing one thing, but at some point, alongside the rest of their work, they started profiling. What is disheartening to me is that no-one seems to want to talk about it. It's as if they're saying to me, "Well I've managed to do it, but I don't want you coming along and stealing my work and limelight so I'm just gonna tell you it's not a career and maybe you'll be put off."

Well I won't be. It's making me more determined. I shall make it my life's work to make Offender Profiling a career here in the UK, just as it is in the US. One small change though. In the US profilers work with the FBI and have to train to become an agent first. We don't have an FBI but not everyone is going to want to train as a policeofficer to become a profiler...i certainly don't! It baffles me why the UK doesn't seem to want to take full advantage of the help profiling can provide. The one thing we SHOULD follow America in doing...and we don't...and there's no explanation why.

Secondly, It's not a career but they're quick to promote their books on the subject. Maybe that's how they make their money...writing about it instead of trying to do it. Well it provides false hope as people are led to believe they can go out and train for this as a career. And, like me, get told that they can't. It's so frustrating.

Ok, That's my rant over with today. My next post will be a bit more interesting...i promise you :-)