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What's it like being in forensics?

Forensic science has always interested me and I'm curious as to what the field is like. What are the hours and working conditions? What are the drawbacks? What advice would you give to someone looking into this career?

forensic forensic-science forensicscience
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Stephanie’s Answer

Forensic science is a very broad field as it really is any scientific method used to aid a legal matter. This means you could be a medical examiner, who needs to be a doctor, or crime scene investigator doing latent print analysis who may be a sworn officer of the law. I work as a serologist in a forensic laboratory, but at my lab there are sections that do drug analysis, toxicology, fire arm analysis and fire debris analysis. One thing that many people don’t realize about forensic science is that you have to be comfortable with explaining your work to others. The whole purpose of your analysis is to present it to people who do not understand science who then need to make decisions off of that information. This may be the jury at a trial, or a detective. Because you also have to realize that although you are helping to solve crimes you aren’t actually the one doing the solving. You often only get a small portion of the details related to the case. The detective is the one that will get reports from various forensic sources as well as witness accounts and interviews to put it all together to make the big picture. One nice thing about this, though, is that there is rarely any need to do things at a specific time. So I don’t work nights or weekends (unless I want to work overtime) and when I need time for appointments or family obligations I have a lot of flexibility that allows me to take the time that I need. I personally got into forensics because I enjoyed working in a lab but I didn’t necessarily want to be coming up with new ideas. I have a set of procedures that I follow and allow me to determine if a bodily fluid is present on an item. I get my answer and I move on to the next item. I find it satisfying to have questions that I can answer and move on because it gives me a sense of purpose and accomplishment. For some the trauma of hearing the stories of the horrible crimes people commit can be difficult, but I find that being away from the scene and only handling objects involved allows me to disconnect a little bit so that it doesn’t become overwhelming. If you are interested in pursuing forensics, I think, the first thing you need to do is figure out what you like to do and then look into the feasibility of doing that in a forensic capacity. Do you like chemistry, biology, computer science, accounting, medicine, anthropology, or do you like the idea of being a police officer. Once you get an idea of what you want to do then you can start looking into what you need to do to get into that field. Because above all else a forensic scientist is a scientist first that uses their skills for forensics, so you have to like the type of science that you are pursuing. One thing that I can advise for any forensic job though is to stay out of trouble. Many forensic jobs will involve a background check, you are going to be trusted to handle crime scene evidence and truthfully report information to a court of law, so if you are seen as a risk or untrustworthy you will have a harder time getting the jobs you want.
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