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State lawmakers are forcing high school freshman to answer one of life’s most pressing questions.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

For Estero High School’s Andrew Waterhouse, the answer is simple.

"A head chef at a fancy restaurant in a big city with lots of people," he said.

However, area freshmen and their professional counterparts question the bill signed in 2006 by then-Governor Jeb Bush. The law requires high school freshman to declare a major, just as those in college do. Some say it doesn’t hurt, but many say it’s too early for the 14- and 15-year-old students to know what they want from life.

But Waterhouse — and many other freshmen — say they are the exception.

The Chef

Waterhouse said he has been cooking for years, experimenting with steak, chicken, pork, cod, catfish and mahi mahi. He’s dedicated to going all the way, but he’s only 15.

"Yes, sir," Waterhouse said when asked if he was up to the challenge. "I have determination and the will to succeed in the things that I would like to be doing in life."

But Sebastian Mozzotta, head chef at the fine food grocery and restaurant Naples Tomato in North Naples, said the challenges are many. In his shop’s three years of operation, it has received numerous positive reviews, including one in the New York Times.

"If you like to cook at home, it doesn’t mean you like to cook in a restaurant. Two different worlds. Two different concepts," Mozzotta said, adding that cooking for family at home is far removed from working 80 hours a week cooking for 350 customers. "There’s pressure. You’re on a time schedule. There’s no life in this business. If you want it, you have to attack it."

Then again, Mozzotta knew his career from the beginning. From the age of seven, when he began working at his grandmother’s restaurant, he knew it. His uncle owned three restaurants. His cousin owned two.

"I was born in the business," Mozzatto said. "Right out of school, I got home, had an hour to do my homework, then had an hour to set up the line. Since I was 3 years old, I was in the kitchen helping my mom prepare food and I just love food. How could you not?"

The Investigator

Some students, however, enjoy the less appetizing activity of solving crimes, including murders.

South Fort Myers High School freshman Emily Seering, 15, wanted to be a National Football League cheerleader in seventh grade. After watching the "CSI" television show, which features crime scene investigators, she changed her mind.

"I find that fascinating, Seering said. "I watch ‘CSI’ all the time and I think it’s really cool how they use all the different devices."

Her professional counterpart, Capt. Rick Joslin of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, had some warnings stemming from his 21-year career. He has been commander of the Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Unit since 2004.

Joslin said those interested in crime scene work need the patience required to wait weeks for laboratory results, the stamina to spend hours examining scenes in forests, on islands and in other inhospitable locations, the discipline to follow processes perfectly every time and the realization that much of your personal life will depend on the actions of criminals.

When the Joslin family goes for a movie or dinner, they take two cars. When Joslin’s son had a birthday party years ago, his father wasn’t there. Joslin was responding to a high-speed chase and murder.

"That’s happened more times than I can count," he said. "Fortunately, my family understands totally. My wife knew before we got married that this was what I wanted to do, and she has supported me 100 percent and I think that is a very important thing."

And then there is the blood and guts.

"On TV, you are kind of shielded from the gruesome part of it. It’s not always a pretty consolidated crime scene with a nice clean wound," Joslin said. "We see horrible things. I’ve seen victims from nine months old, to the very old. I don’t think you ever get used to it, but you have to and there are some people that can’t do this job."

Seeling said she doesn’t care.

"That doesn’t really bother me," Seeling said of the gore. "As long as it’s something I want to do, then it won’t really bother me. It’s something that will keep me jumping and doing new stuff and that’s why."

The Law

Keeping the students jumping is what the fairly recent state law does best, Mozzotta and Joslin say.

"It never hurts for anyone to have a goal and to work towards that goal," Joslin said. "I would think that there’s nothing wrong with that, because someone that age probably will change their mind at some point."

"I can say, ‘Yeah and no,’" Mozzotta said when asked about the law. "Personally, I don’t like to be forced what to do, to choose my own path, but for somebody that doesn’t know what to do — they don’t know what to do to make them happy — it kind of gives them a head start before college."

But it’s hard for Mozzotta and Joslin to question a young person’s motivation. Joslin sought out police work from an early age, too.

"Since I was maybe 10 or 12 years old, it interested me," Joslin said. "I wanted to be a policeman."

For Joslin, the influences were many, including cops on the street and his uncle, who retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek a job with the New York State Police.

"He was a plainclothes person. He would wear a badge and a firearm and maybe that had something to do with it. I’m not sure," Joslin said. "But seeing the police officers out on the street doing their job, you know, when you’re riding around Fort Myers with your parents. I don’t know, it was one of those things that I always wanted to do."

Joslin worked briefly at a local hospital before joining the Sheriff’s Office as a volunteer deputy in 1985. Then he went to an academy, such as the one offered at High Tech Central near downtown Fort Myers, a Lee County school district post-secondary operation.

The District

As far as school districts go, Lee County is well prepared to service the needs brought on by the new law. There are national award-winning comprehensive high schools in each of the district’s three zones.

The district is moving toward offering more and more career academies at other high schools as well. The academies allow students to train for a career while taking traditional academic classes.

At Estero High School, there is a medical academy and — lucky for Waterhouse — a hospitality and tourism academy that will give him an opportunity to practice culinary arts before graduation.

Estero’s Assistant Principal of Curriculum Marsha VanHook said the school has about 30 majors. Majors can be simple subject areas, such as English, or more career-oriented, such as a medical preparation. Most students won’t take classes pertaining to their major until their second or third year.

"They do not have to complete a major, they simply have to declare a major," VanHook said. "If they complete a major, then there’s a special certificate they will receive at graduation."

At South Fort Myers High School, one of the comprehensive high schools, Academy Coordinator Melissa Oertel said the programs bring academics and career preparation together, hence comprehensive.

"We had parents come in, and I gave my spiel. They were amazed. ‘Wow, I wish we had this when we were in high school. We wouldn’t be in our third career, maybe,’" Oertel said. "If the kids get involved in an academy, then they mesh with it. They also are getting the core curriculum classes. Different core curriculum teachers focus specifically with the core curriculum academies. Same thing with the math. Science. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to provide a cohesive unit for each of the kids in the different academies."

One of several academies offered at South Fort Myers High is firefighting. A student in the academy will earn half of their fire certification training before they graduate.

Finding the fire within

Rescuing people from burning buildings is the passion of Seeling’s classmate, Daniel Longoria, 14.

"I liked playing with the little trucks, and I don’t know, it just made me interested. I always wanted to do it since I was little," Longoria said. "I used to roll down the window when I saw a fire truck."

But Longoria is more likely to be rescuing heart attack victims from certain death. Capt. William Becker, who oversees a four firefighter engine company for South Trail Fire District, said his team may respond to 10 calls a day during the season, but go months without a structure fire. Most of the time, it’s for medical emergencies, which fire crews specialize more and more on these days.

"It’s a lot more dynamic now," Becker said. "When I started, it was a minimum of 200 hours for your certification. It’s up to over 400 hours now and that doesn’t count the rescue portion, too. You have to be a minimum of emergency medical technician certified ... when I started it was strictly first aid and we evolved into EMT."

However, the pay is respectable. Becker said firefighters start at $44,000. Joslin said a sheriff’s deputy can expect to start at about $35,000. For a celebrity chef, however, the income can be in the millions of dollars.

But Waterhouse said it doesn’t matter. Money doesn’t drive him, it’s his passion and commitment.

"If you’re confident in yourself," Waterhouse said, "you can do anything you want to do."