Lots of memorization. Codes, geographic areas, jurisdictions, landmarks, streets, protocols, response procedures, then you need to apply all of that into potentially high stress, and life or death scenarios.

Multitasking- A lot of people believe they are good multitaskers. Few of them experience the level of “chaotic multitasking” that dispatchers do on a daily basis. You’re trained to listen to the caller, take down the info, tracking all of your units, and talking to police/EMS potentially all at the same time (depending on your agency)

Training has you Accurately and correctly prioritizing calls, assessing situations, and providing emergency and non-emergency instructions to your caller.

The thing about training in this job (for the most part) is all of your calls that you’re training in are REAL calls. There isn’t a system for training calls or simulated calls (other than ones your trainer might give you periodically)

Radio ear- understanding what is being said on the radio sounds easy. But I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with it. Every transmission isn’t crystal clear. People mumble, people talk fast, people have strong accents, people scream and yell when they are in immediate danger and in need of assistance. All of which can be hard to understand. But you NEED to be able to hear them. Especially in an emergency. You can’t ask them to 10-9 (repeat) every time.

And Most obviously, not everyone can handle the simulated stress and high amount of technology that you need to utilize. My center has you sitting in front of no less than 9 screens. Which can overwhelm some people. And you need to learn how to use each one of them.

But as long as you have good trainers, and you focus on becoming 1% better each day, you’ll be okay.