Whether you're motivated by a "burning" desire to help people or whether you simply love fire extinguishers and Dalmatian dogs, becoming a volunteer firefighter is an excellent way to become more involved in your community. But in order to become a volunteer firefighter, you'll need to learn to excel as a leader, as an athlete, and as a scientific mind.

A fire fighter needs to have an air of authority. Shock and denial are the first stages of grief, and if you're trapped in a burning building with all the possessions of your life slowly turning to ash, your first thought may not be for your own safety, but for how you'll be able to save all of your wonderful things. It's an irrational reaction, but a human and common one, and the job of a good fire fighter is to break people out of that shock and get them to safety. Only a good leader can do that.

Athletic success is also vital to becoming a good volunteer firefighter, for obvious reasons--if you don't have the stamina to haul gigantic fire hose reels and inhale gallons of noxious smoke, you're not going to make it very far when it comes to actually fighting a fire. But the real sine qua non of an excellent fire fighter is a scientific mind. Think about it. Which is the better option: rushing up to a burning building and spraying at it wildly with a pressurized hose or an array of chemical fire extinguishers, or analyzing which way a fire is most likely to spread, cutting off the oxygen supply to that area, and shutting down the blaze with a precise application of sprays at ideal moments? In a crisis situation, a good fire fighter needs to make snap judgments of this kind, and without a good head for calculation and a little bit of logic, even the strongest, most authoritative fire fighter won't be much help.

If you think you fit these qualifications, by all means--volunteer at your local fire department immediately. Whatever you don't know already, you're sure to learn.

If you find you enjoy fire fighting and you're looking to make a change in your life, consider becoming a fire fighter as a career. Like many things today, there are some advanced degrees you'll need to get in order to join the top echelon of fire fighters. Fire Engineering and Fire Science are among the fastest-growing majors in many colleges around the world, dealing with issues about the spread of fires in different kinds of spaces and new developments in the world of fire fighting equipment, including M28 extinguishers and advanced hydrospray extinguishers. It's an investment of time, but it's worth it for anyone who truly wants to excel in the world of fire fighting.