Insert joke here

So it works like this:

You graduate medical school, finish your residency in pathology (five years for my class, although they're shortening it to four) and then you apply for a fellowship in forensic pathology (one year) at the end of which, provided you have passed you pathology boards (definitely not a "given" as the fail rate is 30%-- I think state bar exams are kind of like this) you are eligible to sit for the forensic pathology boards. At the end of this long road, you are a board-certified forensic pathologist.

I'm not at the end of the road yet. So toward the end of residency, you apply for a position in the fellowship. That's where I'm at.

Since the coroner's office is considered a law enforcement agency, you have to pass a background check and a psych exam to work there-- and since that's where you'll end up if you're gonna be a forensic pathologist, they go ahead and do the background check and the psych exam before they let you into the fellowship.

The background check combines the thrill of a scavenger hunt with the excitement of discussing your personal life in great detail with a pleasantly bored retired police officer named Stan.

For the psych exam, you get a Xeroxed sheet in the mail with directions and an appointment time on it. When you get to the inconspicuous little commercial plaza and find your way to the little office, you notice from the lettering on the door that these people do nothing else all day long but administer these kinds of tests. You have trouble imagining that there enough people even in a big city to require this much examining.

In the waiting room, you are handed a little checklist to fill out which seems to be trying to ask you if you've ever done anything embarrassing. The list of things they're asking about is vaguely alarming.

Soon thereafter, the receptionist hands you a packet of papers and ushers you into a conference room that is presently about half-full people, each quietly filling in their answer sheets. They are relatively young and almost all male. One man is a little older than the rest and wears a security guard's uniform. Another man is quite large and physically imposing. His watch clatters on the table and he smells like he's wearing some sort of cologne. There are lots of windows and a little side table with extra pens, pencils, and tissues.

The packet tells you what to do.

There's another depressing little questionaire: Have you ever filed for backruptcy? Have you ever had sex with a minor? Have you ever been convicted of a crime as a juvenile and had the record expunged? Then there's the Minnesota Multiphasic.

I'd heard about the Minnesota Multiphasic but I'd never seen one. It's bascially a very, very long list of strangely worded and often quite disturbing true or false questions: I seldom think of harming animals.... My hearing is sometimes too good and it bothers me... It bothers me when other people criticize me for hitting or striking my family members... (I steal a glance at physically imposing guy)

This is followed by another, similar test; the only differences are that there is a "maybe" option in the second test and that the questions are less overtly alarming but harder to answer: I often initiate conversations with people I don't know... (This is harder to answer than it appears: how often do most people initiate conversations with strangers? Do I initiate these conversations more or less than that? It is hard to arrive at an objective answer) I would rather be a beet farmer than an architect... (There is no box for "Never really gave it much thought")

After the tests, which take all morning, there's a half hour for lunch before you meet with the psychologist (and find out if you're too disturbed to work at the coroner's.)

Stuff like this sort of puts you in a weird mood. I am all weird moody through my baja fresh tacos.

Racing back to the waiting room, making sure to self-consciously to initiate a conversation with the woman in the elevator (just to see if it felt "normal"), there are only a few moments to avoid the gaze of the few other people in the waiting room before I hear my name.

The woman with the clipboard is wearing a jacket-like top and matching skirt in a large houndstooth print, sensible black low heels, a fluffy blond perm, glasses to peer over, and bright blue eyeshadow. Against one wall in the interview room is a series of bookshelves with curly brass sides and faux marble shelves. The titles are all in that loopy seventies font and they smell like an attic.

She sets the clipboard on her lap, smiles professionally, establishes rapport, and the launches into an even more detailed and disturbing variant of the checkoff sheet questions: Have you ever had any of your possessions reposessed? Have you ever been detained by the police? Have you ever... and at some point I just start laughing and tell her that this is the most depressing questionaire I have ever heard. I mean, it is a list of simply every possible thing that could possibly go wrong in your life. She smiles, agrees, re-establishes rapport, and, ever so slightly trips over the next question: Have you ever had sex with an animal?...