Samantha

"Gen Z – I feel like there’s something about us."

By Students of NYC

November 24^th, 2023

"I want to do forensic science, but my major would be biochemistry. I’m interested in all of that — so, like death investigation, autopsy, CSI. I believe the official term is called medicolegal investigation. My aunt is in the field and she would tell me stories. She couldn’t get into the specifics, but she’d tell me the basics of it. And I found it so interesting. I love the TV shows. 'NCIS,' 'FBI,' 'SCI,' 'Criminal Minds.' Especially Garcia from 'Criminal Minds.' She was always the one using the research, finding the people. I'm an investigator; I like to problem solve. My friends can ask me a question, like 'Are these two still together?' I can find it within five minutes. They just have to give me the name. I’ll use everything, social media, the yearbook, whatever it takes.

Gen Z — I feel like there's something about us. I don't know what it is, but there's something within us that just gives us that ‘oomph’ in a sense. We're not afraid of anything. We are activists, honestly. And social media gives us a crazy amount of power. It allows us to say whatever we want. We have more access to everything — in a way we have it much easier than the generation before us. I do a lot of my reading online. I get sucked into a website, a documentary, I love researching that way. I think a lot of my generation is like that. Social media has definitely latched onto us. We rely on it. And I don't think there's anyone you can blame — I just think that it happened and it's something that we can't control. AI is developing every second of the day, so there is nothing we can do about it.

So before dead bodies and 'CSI' and all of that, I wanted to be a meteorologist. My mom has told me since kindergarten, you have to have your mind set on what you want to do. It doesn’t have to be permanent — it can switch around, but you need to have something in mind that you are trying for. My mom had this hookup with Janice Huff from NBC4, so she got in touch with her. We had dinner with her! I was able to actually sit in on the news broadcast, and see how she does it all with the green screen. I had all these books on meteorology, too. So it was always step one, step two, step three, meteorology. And then maybe around the end of middle school, I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. Dead bodies is my way to go. When I got into high school, I chose the pre-med academy because I know they work with anatomy and physiology, AP biology, all the cells and stuff. So I always had a mindset of, okay, when I go here, I'm going to do this. I complete that and I'm going to do the next thing.

It’s about having drive.

My teacher, Ms. Rosenblum, we even have the same name. Samantha. I don't really call her Ms. Rosenblum. I always call her 'twin.' When I was first accepted into the National Honors Society, I was quiet. I'm an introvert, you know? But her big personality just had me saying, okay. She’ll have my back. And then I was always in her classroom, during lunch, or just helping her students out. She calls me 'Sammykins.' She’s my twin ... she's really just like, the best person ever. Oh, and she loves my parents. If she sees me out in the hallway, or running late for class, it’s always — 'I’m telling your mom!'"