Am I a scientist?

Recently I read an article about how scientists are worried that not enough school students are studying science. It seems we are going to run out of scientists. As with all things to worry about, this one had been going on for a while and I think I know the reason.
Years ago, when I was at University enrolled in a science type subject, the same concern prompted the education department to make a short film ‘I am a scientist’. It was intended to encourage the enrollment into science, particularly of girls.
Now, I was a student and not directly involved in the film, and I was enrolled more so than studying, but I came to appear in the film. It was a head shot. It happened like this.
The first thing for you to know is that I was living in a student share house with five other guys and weekends generally and this weekend in particular we were having a party. We each invited a few friends.
We also invited one of our lecturers, Trevor (not his real name), who was a pretty decent chap despite having grown up in Scotland. He was a marine biologist and he told me once the reason he became a marine biologist was so he got to go swimming and diving in warm places and to hang out with girls in bikinis. He appeared to have a pretty good grasp of things and we decided to invite him to the party as an opportunity to learn more of his wisdom. And he might bring some of his girls in bikinis.
He declined, the reason being that he was having a BBQ at home with a few friends and a film crew. Trevor (not his real name) had been chosen as the poster boy for the science film now dubbed ‘Am I a scientist?’ The film intended to highlight the life of a scientist with scenes of Trevor (not his real name): A: Working in the lab in a white coat and those thick black rimmed safety glasses. B: In a lecture theatre explaining complicated diagrams. C: Sitting at a desk having fun with numbers and Latin nomenclature. D: On a diving boat near a coral reef (with girls in Bikinis I assume). E: A BBQ with friends. Presumably this last was to demonstrate that scientists have friends and eat food. ‘Bring them along,’ we said.
So he did.

Now, we get to a little of a back story here. Our house was a happy place in the student house way these things are, and our friends were a diverse bunch. I know there were some in the crowd who were regular attendees at the ‘wallaby stew’ evenings. If my memory is correct this was something to do with leftover bits of Tamar wallaby after something to do with muscular dystrophy research. And copious amounts of cheap red wine- hence the memory failure. So you know the sort of crowd. Normal everyday scientists.
Another of possibly the same subset of friends had regular dinner parties where the aim was to outdo the previous dinner. Being poverty stricken students, ‘outdo’ did not mean fine cuisine and silverware. Dumpster diving was more our style. Meals cooked with zero budget, or as once happened, spaghetti bolognaise eaten out of dog bowls. When we arrived for dinner on that occasion, our host presented us with a garbage bag to wear over our clothes and dog bowls of food on the floor.
To outdo that had been a challenge but a few weeks later I hosted a dinner party nicknamed ‘dingo’s revenge’. This was a time rife with Dingo jokes. Azaria Chamberlain and all that. For dinner I cooked a meatloaf in the shape of a baby, complete with tomato sauce capsule in the neck that burst as I stabbed it. It was a bit graphic, and had the intended effect. My friends, who by the way are still my friends, were shocked.
Now, one of those friends was a cake decorator. She made wonderful cakes. Over the next few weeks, unbeknown to me, she baked and iced my head and at the party now referred to as the ‘Am I a scientist?’ party, they had arranged some ‘entertainment’.
There are two types of people in the world. Those who like to perform in front of a camera and those who have not yet drunk enough. By the time the film crew arrived and set up massive lights in the corners of the room we had only the first type at our party. ‘What’s going on?’ they asked. ‘Filming a short documentary, “I am a scientist” to encourage school leavers to enroll in science subjects. This is a scene where they show that Trevor (not his real name) is at a party being a normal person, proving that scientists are normal people and do normal things and therefore it is quite safe to enroll in science at university and become a scientist,’ we said. ‘Normal,’ they said. Or asked really, in a disbelieving tone.
Some of my other friends are in the army reserve, or the venturer scouts, or they run triathalons and go in adventure races. In other words hard core people who own camouflage gear. At a point in the evening, film crew filming lights blazing and type one people hamming it up proving how normal scientists are, four mercenaries complete in riot gear burst in. They kidnapped me, dragged me out, and there, in the next room, was my head on a silver platter. ‘Scream,’ they said.
I screamed, and they carried my head in next door to be filmed.

It comes as no real surprise to me that the campaign to enroll students into science has not worked.