Emily Barentson, a 2009 graduate from Whitney High School spoke in Mrs. Laura Brun’s 5th period forensics class in E-12 Friday about her experience in the forensic field. She is currently a criminologist interning in a government lab, primarily concerned with toxicology.

Barentson spoke to a packed classroom about thing from college preparation to how she was able to get the attention she needed to land an internship.

“Be your own counselor. You have to know your major inside and out. If you can do that now, it’s going to be a breeze. Look up colleges, look up what major you want to do, plan it out yourself and see what offers what,” Barentson said.

During her presentation, Barentson continually stressed the importance of her lab experience, even above her GPA, when trying to get a job as a criminologist in a real-world situation.

“Take something that’s unpaid. Chances are, what you’re given will be unpaid. And that sucks, because you spend so much time. If you calculate 10 hours a week for two years, that’s a lot of unpaid time for the Department of Justice. But I’ve met people and continue to meet people, and my supervisors tell directors of other labs about me. So it pays off, it has a different value than money. It will give you a step up when you’re trying to get hired, because people with no lab experience will not get hired,” Barentson said.

Brun and Barenston continually gave career advice that applied to more than just the forensic field.

“How you separate yourself at all from the internet world? What gets jobs is knowing somebody. Face-to-face, that contact, that putting yourself out there when you’re so used to sitting behind a computer screen,” Brun said.

After over an hour-long presentation, Barentson was given a resounding applause, and several interested students remained during lunch in order to look at her work and ask her more about her career experience.

“I find [forensics] really interesting and I really like science, so  I would like to go into something forensics, I’m not 100 percent sure yet, but something more along the lines of forensic biology, like [Barenston] was talking about. It really interests me, so going to to all these presentations steers me to the direction I want to go to,” Kaylee Harlan said.

After the presentation was over, Brun seemed optimistic that the presentation would help students in their journey to college and on to a career.

Brun said, “[I hope students] see the value of what we’re doing in class, and some of the long-term applications of some of that down the line. And to get students excited that Whitney High School is not the end of the road. This is just the beginning of everything to come.”

by HARMONY REILLY & CARSEN VAN DER LINDEN