My son is a junior in high school and has shown an interest in the subject
of genetics and genetic engineering. I would like to encourage and help him
to determine if this field is really what he wants to pursue as his life's
career. His school counsellor has not been of great help. The counsellor has
produced a list of schools that he might attend but they don't have much
information about what a geneticist does. I don't know enough about the
field to fill a thimble. I have tried to contact several companies in the
S.F. Bay area to see if they have tours etc but so far I have not found one
willing to give him a tour of their facilites or otherwise answer the kinds
of questions my son wants to ask. We also have not been able to make contact
with any college professors who would be willing to talk about the field
to an unsolicitated requestor.
I understand what his problem is because I saw this same problem with students
in engineering school. These people were taking technical courses but had no
idea how they would actually apply them when they graduated. They just
didn't know "what an engineer does". My son wants to know "what a geneticist
does". He has read a lot of books about genetics but doesn't know how
a geneticist goes about applying them. Do they spend all day in the lab? At a
desk? whatever? The books also refer to various equipment, for instance
electrophoresis(sp?), but can't picture how this actually works and how
it gets used ( I've tried to explain this but he wants to ** see ** how
it works).
So, the question is "who do I contact that can give him the kind of information
he wants and maybe some he can't even imagine yet". Anyone out there want to
tackle a teenage wannabe Genetic Engineer?
One of the questions he asked early on was "what degree does he need to be a
genetic engineer?". The college catalogs do not mention a degree in
"Genetic Engineering". We finally decided, maybe erronously, that he probably
wants a degree in "Molecular Chemistry". Does this sound correct? Is Molecular Chemistry a more general field than Genetics?
As you can probably guess I have "gotten into" this and I think it's really
a great field for a young person to pursue and I have a lot of questions
myself. In case you're wondering, he has shown no interest in computers, or
any of the "engineering diciplines" like Electrical,Civil, etc. Actually I
think from what I've seen so far and what I already know about engineering
that Genetic Engineering has a much brighter future than any of the others.
If you've read this far, thanks for the time. If you have any input mail to:
duke at Cairn.Eng.Sun.Com
