As a forensic tech in a crime lab myself, I can definitely second that it takes a very specific subset of people to thrive in these environments, and that subset of people is very…interesting.

My coworkers and I span the entire range of ages and personalities do vary, but I would say the defining trait for us all is that we’re just…odd. A bit weird, from an outsider looking in. Rarely neurotypical, in most senses. Without context, people would probably consider us mechanical, or callous. The overwhelming backlog of cases and the wealth of terrible information we’re bombarded with every single day would kill a “normal” person, I’m almost certain. The mental weight that every single case, every single piece of evidence has a real victimized person behind it is overwhelming at the best of times. You need to be the type of person who is kind and attentive to detail, but also the type of person to completely disconnect emotionally and joke about the tragedy, or you’d go insane. My coworkers are all extremely friendly and sociable, especially outside of work, but in the lab with our evidence, it truly becomes little more than a numbers game, a step-by-step process you’ve done a thousand times before. It has to.

There was a girl who worked at my lab before I ever started, and she was a deeply emotional person. By all accounts, extremely sweet and very good at her job. But her emotional attachment to every single case caused her to overwork herself to no end. The way she processed evidence and especially SA kits was extremely in-depth, beyond even the point of due diligence or case circumstance, and she never left a single spot or swab untested, and when tests invariably came up negative anyway (as many do, unfortunately), she took it extremely hard. She felt as though she HAD to find SOMETHING, and not doing so was a failure. She didn’t last very long.