Need Career Advice/To Vent

[sanantone]

I took a pay cut when I went from being a corrections officer to a substance abuse counselor because I have to start at the intern level. Internships are much harder to find than corrections jobs, so I took the opportunity when I could. I had been searching for an internship for years. Another reason why I left the corrections job is because I was only interested in going through the peace officer academy and going on patrol. Once I found out that we had a bunch of miserable peace officers stuck working in the jail years after graduating from the academy, I looked for an exit. I never wanted to do corrections long-term. I can always go get a corrections job in a bigger county with much better pay and benefits while having the flexibility of moving to another position within the county as an internal applicant.

In the future, I will definitely be looking to go back to working for the government as a counselor or something else. While I have never come across a government agency in Texas with good educational benefits (it doesn't really matter since I have my degrees anyway), there is rarely a private organization here with better retirement and insurance benefits. I also like the security of unions and civil service. We don't have a strong union presence in the private sector here.