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Young Forensic Scientists Forum Newsletter - July 1999 A Career in
Forensic Science? |
| I was sitting in camp one sultry July
afternoon about six years ago, painting an indecipherable code number on a prehistoric
stone tool and keeping my mind occupied with thoughts of the future. Suddenly a major
realization struck me: I was never going to be asked to lead an expedition to the lost
Mayan pyramids. I would never unearth a second Pompeii. At the top of my career as an
archaeologist I’d be directing other people to paint codes on artifacts which would
then be reburied in the back rooms of small regional museums. I wanted something more.
But what type of career would be interesting and challenging, use some of the skills I’d developed in college and beyond, and have some relevance outside of academic papers and grant requests? After a bit of soul-searching, I hit upon the field of forensic science. Now the question was how to get a job, and in what discipline. I had hoped to go into crime scene work, since it seemed to offer a variety of challenges similar to archaeology and had the advantage of being outside of the laboratory much of the time. However, I soon discovered that one of the best paths to working crime scenes was to become a police officer. This was not a direction I was prepared to take at the time, so the search continued. I had no interest in DNA or chemical analysis, which currently offer many employment possibilities. Forensic pathology was fascinating, but I wasn’t exactly ready to go to medical school. So, to get more information about the field and hopefully find some new employment leads, I decided to go to graduate school. Several universities nationwide had forensic or criminal justice programs— some offering master’s degrees; others with certification courses. The one I finally settled on was a master’s program at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. It had the advantage of offering a wide variety of courses, allowing me to get a sample of what most of the different disciplines were like. I studied questioned document examination, firearms and toolmarks, criminal law, pathology and crime scene evidence gathering techniques, among other things. As it turned out, the primary advantage of the GW program was its opportunity for making contacts in the field. Most of the instructors were or are forensic professionals, and as such, provided a great conduit for networking. I found my present job through one of my professors, a retired FBI
agent. He announced to the class one day that there were openings in the Firearms –
Toolmarks Unit in the FBI Laboratory. That sounded like an interesting branch of the
discipline, so I submitted an application. After an extremely lengthy process of
background investigations, drug tests and polygraph interviews, I was hired as a
technician in the lab. Now I’m testing firearms of all types, traveling to provide
training to other laboratories and helping with the occasional shooting reconstruction on
crime scenes. While it’s not the on-scene evidence collection job I had envisioned
for myself when I embarked upon this career search, how many other jobs allow me to walk
around with a lab coat on and an Uzi in my hands? I’m currently in training to be a
firearms examiner, which will provide me with even more interesting challenges and
responsibilities. |
Copyright
© 1999 Young Forensic Scientists Forum / American Academy of Forensic Sciences |