The sun is hot—like, hot, hot. Despite slathering yourself in layers of SPF 50, you swear you can hear your skin sizzle as it melts into the plastic seat of your lifeguard perch. The sweat causes your aviators to slide down to the tip of your nose. You push them back up, over and over, in some kind of slippery loop. You practically have to pinch yourself to stay awake.

When you took this job, after enduring all those painful hours of Red Cross lifeguard and CPR training, you saw yourself saving lives and being the hometown hero. You thought you'd be like a character on Baywatch, but instead you've morphed into the jaded lifeguard in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

You certainly didn't imagine being stuck babysitting toddlers; lips numb from blowing your whistle at rowdy kids all day long; repeating "Walk! Don't Run! Walk!" in a stern voice that sounds uncomfortably like your mothers', so much that you're muttering the phrase in your sleep.

Out of all the lifeguard gigs you could get for yourself—your parent's country club, Camp Shmoop, tanning on top of a tower at the beach—you're here, scraping gum off the inside of the pool's water filter.

You don't deserve this. You're a great swimmer. No, you're a stellar swimmer. Three-time league champ and star of both your high school's swim and water polo teams. You're destined to save lives, not spend your time cleaning pool toilets, testing chlorine levels every five minutes, and pouring vats of nacho cheese sauce over stale tortilla chips at the snack bar. But this is the reality of it—weird, uneven, tan lines, and enough skin peeling off your nose and shoulders to cloth a snake.

You may be itching to show off your skills, but the thing about being a lifeguard is it's quiet and boring—until it's not. You're there for a reason: to keep people safe. It doesn't matter whether you're at a pool, a water park, or a beach.

If you work on the beach, it's tense and dangerous. Lifeguards put their lives on the line every day battling rip currents (dangerous vortexes of water that can easily pull you under if you panic) and enormous breaking waves. You even have to worry about sharks, which you may have forgotten about when you signed up for the gig. It's tough out there, patrolling the beach. Even veteran lifeguards don't always make it.

Full-time beach lifeguards are often on par with firemen and EMTs. In fact, many cities consider their lifeguards as part of the same team, and compensate them with high salaries and pensions. Not sure if lifeguards are worth that kind of dough? Trust us, these folks earn their keep. Thousands of people are saved every year by lifeguards on the beach. In Newport Beach, California, alone, over 4,000 people were rescued and over 150,000 dangerous situations were averted thanks to their lifeguard staff (who are amongst the highest paid in the U.S., and well worth it).

If diving into icy, turbulent waters to spot that 300-pound man, going past the sea puss and under an enormous wall of water before it's too late, then dragging him back to shore sounds perfectly doable to you, then maybe you'd pass a beach lifeguard test. Yes, there's a test. Getting the job of a beach lifeguard means beating out hundreds of others in a series of grueling tests on both land and sea.

You also have to be able to live with the fact that you may not be able to save everyone. It can be difficult to keep track of all of those swimmers, and it's easy to lose sight of ones who are swept away by troublesome waves. Even if you are able to get to them, they could still drown.

Then there's CPR, which sure isn't anything like it is in the movies, where a few kisses of air and a dribble of water from the mouth signals that everything is magically okay. No way. CPR only works a small percentage of the time. So whether you're a pool lifeguard, a waterpark guard, or a beach titan, you will need to be strong, smart, and have nerves of steel, as you go about saving people's lives.

Lifeguards must be vigilant. When you're on duty, you're scanning your area of the beach or pool, constantly looking out for danger. Your eyes are glued to the water, so those with attention issues need not apply. You need to be constantly on, as a little kid can drown in a kiddy pool in seconds, and a swimmer can get swallowed up by the ocean instantly.

In addition to scanning the pool, babysitting kids, applying band aides to boo-boos and bee stings, giving swim lessons to the unbuoyant, cleaning the restrooms, finessing chlorine levels, and saying "Walk! Don't Run! Walk!" until your face turns blue, you'll also be responsible for cleaning up any unfortunate accidents. Yes, we're talking about getting everyone out of the pool for that Caddyshack moment, when the floating doodie strikes.

Of course, being a lifeguard isn't all scrubbing toilets and fishing little kids out of the drink. There can be a comradery that develops amongst the ranks and there's plenty of time to work on your tan. You may even decide to pool your talents together to make weird YouTube videos of pop songs "Lifeguard Style."

Just be careful; some cities, like El Monte, fired their whole staff after they made a video on the waterslides after public hours. (Perhaps they just didn't like Gangnam Style.)

You're also likely to be in charge of teaching the next generation of lifeguard wannabes. Junior lifeguard programs at the beach and the pool are popular and command big bucks. It's the senior lifeguards and those in a supervisory position who head up these programs, in which kids learn swimming and lifesaving skills.

Most lifeguard jobs are seasonal. For many high school and college students it's a part-time job, but for others it's a second career. Those who love the sea (or pool) often work as teachers during the off-season, allowing them the flexibility to have the summer free to head back to the beach. While it's often considered a young person's job, there are still a few lifers who have been guarding forever, still walking the beach in their 60s and 70s. As long as they pass the recertification test every year, they have a job.

Now guarding is not the job for everyone, but if you feel the call of the ocean tugging at you, then perhaps you should answer it back...maybe.

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