Through my research of ballistics, and my failed attempts at matching real striations on bullets, I have learned that I am not cut out for a job in comparing reference bullets to bullets pulled out of a victim of found lodged in a wall at a crime scene.  I was decent at matching the barcodes on paper, but this was much easier than the actual bullets, because the lines and gaps were much larger.  I was terrible at matching striations on the bullets, and I have the scores of 25% and 0% to prove it.  I was better at matching the cartridges which I got a 75% in.  What helped me the most was being able to magnify the bullets by large amounts to closely examine the striations and patterns.  I would not trust myself, or by hearing how everybody else in my class did, any of my classmates to connect a suspected weapon to one used at a crime scene.  This skill is truly for the professionals, and even then, I don’t understand how they do it so well.  In the field, I would use ballistics evidence to support my case, however, I would not rely solely on that, because I probably would have trouble 100% trusting the results.  While ballistics is a useful tool and has helped to convict killers in the past, to me it doesn’t seem fully accurate, that is unless a professional explained to me how they are sure that a certain bullet came from a certain gun.  When I grow up, I think I’ll stick with working in the field and let the ballistics experts do their own thing.