rudester
I was reading an article online, trying to find a movie I found this interesting article about a guy named Brian Mackinnon, He was a 30year old who posed as a freshman in highschool and re-did highschool just so he could become a doctor and got caught!!! TRUE STORY!!!
Monday, November 15, 2010
Fake Teens Part II: Brian MacKinnon and Other Fake Students
Close, but no degree
Like the career criminal James Hogue, Brian MacKinnon of Scotland tried to recapture lost opportunities by impersonating a high school student. He just wasn't terribly good at it.
From boyhood, Brian wanted to be a doctor. And at the age of 18 he was on his way, leaving Bearsden Academy in East Dunbartonshire to enroll in the medical course at Glasgow University. The year was 1980.
MacKinnon claims he became very ill with mono and coxsackie his first winter at university. Fatigued, he fell behind in his studies and failed all his major exams the following spring. He also claims Dean Edward McGirr kindly offered him a second chance, but McGirr wasn't dean until 1992. At any rate, neither his health nor his grades showed any improvement the following term. MacKinnon was expelled.
In 1986 he began working toward a science degree, in the hopes of successfully re-applying for med school. Those hopes were smacked down when he failed an important chemistry exam. He continued to study, living with his mother and terminally ill father in a Bearsden council flat.
By 1993, 30-year-old MacKinnon despaired of ever getting back into med school by conventional means. His own account of his troubles reads like something out of Dickens; illness, poor circumstances, horribly unfair professors. He had been banished most cruelly from the halls of learning, without recourse.
So it was only fair that he forge some transcripts and re-enroll at Bearsden Academy as a 17-year-old boy.
While MacKinnon's tale brims with the sadness of the dejected scholar, the details of his fraud show the distinct mark of the Hollywood-obsessed fantasist. He chose the name "Brandon Lee", and made Brandon's late father a professor of zoology, his mother an opera singer. Fortunately for MacKinnon, no one at Bearsden checked his background too carefully; his references included an English zoologist and a Canadian schoolteacher named Marsha Hunt - both fictitious. If his Canadian accent lacked authenticity, no one noticed.
Unlike James Hogue, MacKinnon made serious mistakes. First of all, he didn't really look like a teenager. His classmates quickly, and aptly, nicknamed him "Thirtysomething". Secondly, he took the risk of enrolling at the very same school he attended in the '70s, where many of the same teachers were still employed. Lucky for him, he hadn't been a conspicuous presence back then, and no one recognized him.
On one occasion, MacKinnon slipped up by commenting that he could recall the day Elvis died. Pretty odd for a kid born in 1977. The other students looked askance at him but said nothing.
His mother, May, knew Brian had returned to school. She just didn't know it was high school.
MacKinnon didn't take the wallflower route. He captured the lead in the school's production of South Pacific, worked on the school magazine, and made a lot of friends. His life as the son of a traveling opera singer probably didn't hurt; even late headmaster Norman McLeod presumed Brandon had a "cosmopolitan background", which accounted for his mature confidence and good manners. All in all, he was a model student.
Brandon Lee graduated from Bearsden in the spring of 1994 with straight As and an acceptance to the medical course at Dundee University. If anyone found it odd that his jet-setting mother attended neither his stage premiere nor his graduation, they politely said nothing to him. The ruse had succeeded.
The first half of his freshman year at Glasgow University was equally successful, aside from a family illness that forced him to leave school in December. He was set to return in the fall of '95. Jubilant, Brandon arranged to take a summer holiday to Tenerife with three female school chums. That was his fatal mistake. One of the girls caught a glimpse of MacKinnon's real passport, and a call was made to the school.
May MacKinnon turned on the TV one day to learn that her 32-year-old son had posed as a teenager for two years, directly under her nose.
Rather pitifully, MacKinnon insisted he would make a good doctor. In 2002, he was reported to be living in his car.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Fake Teens Part II: Brian MacKinnon and Other Fake Students
Close, but no degree
Like the career criminal James Hogue, Brian MacKinnon of Scotland tried to recapture lost opportunities by impersonating a high school student. He just wasn't terribly good at it.
From boyhood, Brian wanted to be a doctor. And at the age of 18 he was on his way, leaving Bearsden Academy in East Dunbartonshire to enroll in the medical course at Glasgow University. The year was 1980.
MacKinnon claims he became very ill with mono and coxsackie his first winter at university. Fatigued, he fell behind in his studies and failed all his major exams the following spring. He also claims Dean Edward McGirr kindly offered him a second chance, but McGirr wasn't dean until 1992. At any rate, neither his health nor his grades showed any improvement the following term. MacKinnon was expelled.
In 1986 he began working toward a science degree, in the hopes of successfully re-applying for med school. Those hopes were smacked down when he failed an important chemistry exam. He continued to study, living with his mother and terminally ill father in a Bearsden council flat.
By 1993, 30-year-old MacKinnon despaired of ever getting back into med school by conventional means. His own account of his troubles reads like something out of Dickens; illness, poor circumstances, horribly unfair professors. He had been banished most cruelly from the halls of learning, without recourse.
So it was only fair that he forge some transcripts and re-enroll at Bearsden Academy as a 17-year-old boy.
While MacKinnon's tale brims with the sadness of the dejected scholar, the details of his fraud show the distinct mark of the Hollywood-obsessed fantasist. He chose the name "Brandon Lee", and made Brandon's late father a professor of zoology, his mother an opera singer. Fortunately for MacKinnon, no one at Bearsden checked his background too carefully; his references included an English zoologist and a Canadian schoolteacher named Marsha Hunt - both fictitious. If his Canadian accent lacked authenticity, no one noticed.
Unlike James Hogue, MacKinnon made serious mistakes. First of all, he didn't really look like a teenager. His classmates quickly, and aptly, nicknamed him "Thirtysomething". Secondly, he took the risk of enrolling at the very same school he attended in the '70s, where many of the same teachers were still employed. Lucky for him, he hadn't been a conspicuous presence back then, and no one recognized him.
On one occasion, MacKinnon slipped up by commenting that he could recall the day Elvis died. Pretty odd for a kid born in 1977. The other students looked askance at him but said nothing.
His mother, May, knew Brian had returned to school. She just didn't know it was high school.
MacKinnon didn't take the wallflower route. He captured the lead in the school's production of South Pacific, worked on the school magazine, and made a lot of friends. His life as the son of a traveling opera singer probably didn't hurt; even late headmaster Norman McLeod presumed Brandon had a "cosmopolitan background", which accounted for his mature confidence and good manners. All in all, he was a model student.
Brandon Lee graduated from Bearsden in the spring of 1994 with straight As and an acceptance to the medical course at Dundee University. If anyone found it odd that his jet-setting mother attended neither his stage premiere nor his graduation, they politely said nothing to him. The ruse had succeeded.
The first half of his freshman year at Glasgow University was equally successful, aside from a family illness that forced him to leave school in December. He was set to return in the fall of '95. Jubilant, Brandon arranged to take a summer holiday to Tenerife with three female school chums. That was his fatal mistake. One of the girls caught a glimpse of MacKinnon's real passport, and a call was made to the school.
May MacKinnon turned on the TV one day to learn that her 32-year-old son had posed as a teenager for two years, directly under her nose.
Rather pitifully, MacKinnon insisted he would make a good doctor. In 2002, he was reported to be living in his car.