What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

[odelay]

---

Members do not see this ad.

First of all - I'm not a bitter man. I just have little patience with the hopelessly disillusioned.

That being said, I was reading the local paper from my small hometown, and it had an article about some "honor roll" seniors from the town high school. There was a brief biography of about 20 of them complete with their yearbook photos and everything.

I noticed that 5 of them (25% of them, mind you), had written something that caught my eye in the "Career Plan: ________" space. They all listed, "Medical Forensic Pathologist."

Uhhhh . . . okay. Maybe it was some inside joke, but I doubt it. First of all, how does one go about becoming a Medical Forensic Pathologist. And second, aren't there like maybe THREE WORKING people in the entire United States with that job title?

Not that I want to go around crushing the dreams of pre-college students, but who the heck is giving these kids the idea for such a job? My only guess is that there is some new police/doctor/detective show on television with some extremely attractive characters. Do you think working as a physician is becoming "sexy" to younger people? I wonder if that really affects the career choices of people. I imagine that college would weed out some of the superficial dreamers, but still.

I guess I'm becoming a weathered and grizzly college senior. Yikes.

I'm out like jelly shoes.

 

[Pickle Salt]

perhaps it has something to do with shows like "Scrubs" and "CSI", which glamorize the medical/forensic fields into romantic worlds of fun/intrigue. there's even that reality show that was on last year, what was it? "Houston Medical?"

 

[Delvonik]

x

 

[Bonds756]

TV definitely has a strong influence. Like when ER first started how in the following years there were huge increases in people applying to Emergency residencies. Forensic pathologists are not new, but they are becoming increasingly used in a variety of fields and shows like CSI (the #1 show of the last two years ratings-wise) are depicting this.
But before CSI and ER, it wasn't unusual for 25% of the top students in a high school to want to be MDs. The only difference is people now have a preconceived notion of what field they want to go in, which often ultimately changes (or they never get in to med school).