FBI Agent Career

Words: 1102
Pages: 5

The Life Long Career of an FBI Agent

My initial reaction to this assignment when my teacher, Ms. Kidder, assigned it was “well, this is going to suck because I have no idea what I want to be.” Once I realized that I was able to take a quiz to test what career I would be best at I got excited about this paper. In order to help me decide what I wanted to be I took the Princeton Review Quiz. Out of all the career options, I chose small business owner, detective/private investigator, and FBI agent (“Career Quiz”). My final choice was FBI agent because I know that I want to work in law. Ever since I was eleven years old I knew that I wanted to work in law; originally I wanted to be a lawyer, but after two years I thought that was boring, however,
…show more content…
In order to become an agent, I must complete rigorous assessments to test my mind and body. Each applicant receives a critical and intense background check. The first step is training and conditioning the body for such dangerous and life threatening missions as completed by the FBI. Throughout training, agents learn how to defend themselves in any situation, how to protect others and the surrounding area, how to stay undercover, how to maintain a healthy lifestyle in order to stay fit, and how to have thick skin. As a rookie, an agent is considered a G-1 agent (Ackerman). I would complete missions that are fairly easy compared to higher ranked agent’s missions. Each mission tests the agent’s strength, ability, agility, reasoning, and the ability to apply the information that they learned during training. Through the years they can progress all the way to a G-15 (Ackerman). The only way an agent can achieve the next level is by completing missions without supervision. With each progression through the force the pay raises. The starting salary of a typical FBI agent is about $53,239 (Ackerman). It can raise to about $145,829 a year ranging on the rank of the agent (Ackerman). Becoming an FBI agent will not be easy but the hard work will definitely pay for the pay that I could …show more content…
On television and the big screen, FBI agents and crime fighting is portrayed as a fun, action-filled adventure that anyone can do. In reality, being an FBI agent is hard and vigorous and requires a lot of time and patience to completely master. Although being an FBI agent is fun, many agents have lost their lives. One source states the when his team traveled to a fire station to help them after a riot, they had gunshots fired at them all night (Botting). Each mission is life threatening and could possibly injury the agent critically. Another downside to being an agent is that when I am on a mission I can not tell my family where I am, what I am doing, or when I will be back home. One agent stated that he married his wife and a few days after getting married he was called to go on a mission (Princeton Review). He could not tell his wife anything of his whereabouts (Princeton Review). Not being able to tell my family where I am is not so bad because I would still be able to talk them. In addition to the two other downsides is that I can not tell anyone about the missions I have been on other than the people on the force due to government confidentiality. As of now, that is all I can see as being a bad thing, other than that I believe becoming an agent would not be