Special Agent Wimp

Special Agent. It sounds cool and sleek. It sounds like I own black sunglasses.

It sounds like I know how to wield a firearm.

I have no experience in any field that would be of much use to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And yet, more recently than I would like to admit, I wanted to be an FBI agent. I knew it was a pipe dream. I'm an English concentrator, not a forensics expert. Nevertheless, I've found out that I'm not alone. It seems from two years of informal conversation with my fellow undergrads that lot of Harvard students want to join the top dogs of law enforcement. Even Harvard students who wouldn't dream of owning a gun see the nation's leading law enforcement agency as having a special aura of power. A lot of us are control freaks. The ultimate level of control is when you are the law. That, in most people's minds, means the FBI.

And a good number of us are still possessed with the somewhat juvenile desire to, well, have a really cool job. We've watched too much television and want to be Mulder and Scully, Men in Black, Clint Eastwood, Clarice Starling, Charlie's Angels. We want to pack heat and wear the Armani.

The leap from the FBI to Harvard isn't that uncommon. Former HUPD Chief Robert Tonis spent 27 years with the FBI before coming to Cambridge. The Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School have a number of faculty ties to the FBI. Law School Professor William J. Stuntz, a criminal law expert, sometimes lectures at the legendary Quantico Academy in Virginia, where special agents train. Alan A. Stone, Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry at the Law School, has been a consultant for the FBI during crises like the stand-off between law enforcement officials and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.

Malcolm K. Sparrow, a former Detective Chief Inspector with the British Police Service, works at the Kennedy School. His method of fingerprint matching is being integrated into the FBI's system.

But what about at the other end? From Harvard to the FBI is a less frequently documented move. What about those of us who dream of one day donning the badge? You have to be a U.S. citizen--or a citizen of the Northern Mariana Islands--between the ages of 23 and 36. You have to be willing to go wherever the FBI wants to send you. You have to have uncorrected vision no worse than 20/200 and nearly perfect corrected vision. You can't be color-blind, and you have to be able to drive. You must have graduated from an accredited college, and if you don't have either a law or accounting degree or fluency in another language, you have to have some real-world work experience.

But it isn't that easy. The amount of paperwork alone is frightening. Submit to a polygraph. Say how many times you've smoked pot. Give the agency permission to talk to basically everyone who has ever known you, including your mother, your neighbors, your ex and possibly your pets. Let them test your hearing and urine. Read No. 8 under "Minimum Qualifications" on the application checklist: "I am willing and able to engage in strenuous and potentially dangerous duties to include, but not limited to, the use of firearms, participation in raids, arrests and/or the use of defensive tactics."

The application to be an intern isn't much less intense. Nevertheless, many of us have dreamed of heading to Quantico for 16 weeks of intense training in pursuit of the biggest bad-ass title of all: Special Agent.

Sadly, despite my desire to be a bad-ass, I eventually came to realize that I am not destined for a career as an FBI agent. It took me a long time to give up this dream, to realize that my passion for literature and wimpiness were not going to bring me to the forefront of the law enforcement profession. For me, the FBI is unattainable. In high school parlance, it's the in-crowd and I'm the kid on the outside.

Most of the Harvard friends who told me of their interest in the FBI will never head to Quantico either. We'll go to law school, or medical school, or Wall Street. We'll become artists, accountants, reporters, bankers--but despite the number of us who have at one time considered the Bureau, we probably won't become special agents. At night, we'll come home to our safe houses, have dinner with our families, and watch bad television shows with glamorous FBI-like characters in them. And maybe that's better, because after all, being in the Bureau takes more than being a sharp shooter and owning an sharp suit: it takes a certain kind of guts, and despite the dream, I just don't have them.

Don't you feel safer?