I actually went the opposite direction you're looking at taking right now. Straight out of high school I thought EMS was what I wanted to do, I had a good friend interested as well so we started going through courses together. EMR (which at the time meant you made very little and worked remote rural) was about 5-6 months of school at the time, and EMT (better pay, better skills, better locations - smaller towns/cities) was about about 8 months.
It wasn't for me, I couldn't see myself in the long term being happy doing it and found through a summer/temp job in oil and gas accounting something that I really enjoyed doing. Over 10 years later I'm still happy I ignored the money I sank into EMS and went for a degree/designation. I chalk it up to a valuable life experience that changed who I am in a very positive way.
You could contact some fire departments to see if you can do ride-alongs or look at Chestermere or smaller areas outside Calgary to see if they need volunteer fire fighters. While this is not what you're looking at you would be amazed at how often fire and EMS respond to the same scenes and work towards the same ends. This would allow you to see if it really is something you want to do, and it can give you a real flavour of what you would be doing. Being a first responder is rewarding, but is also very challenging.
Mostly to be able to see this as a volunteer or ride along you just have to be willing to drive to areas that really need people to provide the basic services. So you'll likely need to look outside of Calgary.
|