SuccessBeyond

I knew I wanted to be a police officer. There was no question about it. The only real question was how to get there sooner. While both my sisters were planning on going to university, the idea of spending four years learning about a broad topic like sociology or criminology didn’t appeal to me. (More on this later.) I had heard that Seneca offered one of the best police foundations programs in the country and, better yet, a rugby team that stood undefeated for the past three years.

My experience at Seneca is hard to describe. There was so much happening in my life at that time. I was fresh out of high school, moved away from home for the first time, trying to work extra shifts between classes and was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan with the army. If anything, I would describe my experience at Seneca as an introduction to the real world.

Although I was eager to get my police career going, the police force wasn’t ready for me. It took six years from the time I first applied before I was eventually hired. During those years in between, I worked in the private sector. I soon realized that although the trade-specific education that comes with a college diploma was enough to get my foot in the door, I needed to do more to advance my career.

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a soldier — and that’s what I did. I joined the army part time through a high school co-op program when I turned 17, but the idea of living and working somewhere as far removed from Toronto as Petawawa didn’t really appeal to me. It was then that I started to explore a career in policing. After all, the two professions seemed very similar. (Spoiler alert: they’re actually very different.) Instead, I ended up doing both!

A major reason that I decided to go back to school was because I wanted to better position myself for career progression. Most of my peers had a university-level education. Although I was now on par with my peers after finishing the Bachelor of Applied Arts in Justice Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber, I realized that the opportunity existed to stand out among them by pushing on to a master's degree. I came across the Master of Public Policy, Administration and Law program offered by York University. It appealed to me for a number of reasons — namely that the program was highly relevant to my career in policing, that it was delivered in person on a part-time basis and followed a cohort model just like the justice studies program at University of Guelph-Humber.

As I mentioned before, the main benefit (in my view) to starting with a diploma program was that I was able to get out into the real (working) world earlier and gain first-hand experience dealing with issues that we, time and time again, were talking about in class. Because of this, I feel that all the lessons in the master's program truly resonated with me on a personal level. I could relate them to my personal experience, tying the abstract ideas from class to situations I'd experienced myself.

I retired from the military after 18 years of service and, after working in physical security at both Scotiabank and TD bank, I finally transitioned to policing. I’ve been a police officer for nearly a decade now having worked in priority (9-1-1) response, community response, criminal investigations, crime analysis and now in operational planning.

Absolutely. If there’s one benefit I had with a two-year diploma, it’s that I was able to get out into the real world sooner. I truly believe we do ourselves a disservice by expecting high school students to know what they want to do and to commit to four years of school in that pursuit — without first having any experience.

Having experienced the real world first-hand, the lessons I learned in class later on were no longer these broad, abstract ideas. Instead, I could relate them to my personal experiences. As a result, I was much more involved, even captivated, by the concepts we talked about in class.

Take a breather, but don’t stop. Get out into the world and start exploring your passion. Find a niche that suits your interests. Once you have a better idea of where you’d like your career to go, then pursue the higher education that will open those doors for you. It definitely beats trying to guess what degree will suit your needs before you’ve even started.

The application process for my master’s degree was different as it felt more like a job application. I had to write a cover letter to sell myself, submit an essay as an example of my writing ability and even get reference letters from work and school! Graduate-level class sizes are smaller, so there are fewer spaces available.

I’m looking to start the next chapter in my life. I’m actively exploring opportunities to put my new degree to use. I’ve started writing a book, advocating for culture change in policing and will be teaching at Seneca part time in 2022.