Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Anatomy Might Be Easier If You Know These Things In Advance

1. You don't have to know everything. I started hyperventilating when I saw my Netter's atlas for the first time, thinking I had to memorize everything on those plates. You don't. You are only responsible for a fraction of the material.

2. In anatomy lab, the body doesn't remain uh, organized. The body parts are all over the place! For instance, you are supposed to be identifying say... oh... a ureter. But the kidney has been displaced to XYZ location... possibly in the thoracic cavity or maybe just in a big pile of cadaveric nastiness on the table. So you don't have a point of reference... and you're thinking "Well, this could be the gonadal artery... or maybe some kind of crazy nerve... originally attached to... the posterior abdominal wall? the spleen? the stomach... no scratch that... wait, where's the damn kidneys? shit!" Mind you... this thinking process has to be completed in approximately 30 seconds while you are deciding which answer to write down.

3. Contact lenses + Anatomy lab = sad face. At least for me. My lab partners don't seem to have problems with their lenses, but mine feel horrible. The best way I can describe it is like getting icy-hot in your eye.

4. The better you know the theory of the body, the less time you have to spend in lab with the dead people. Lots of students spend tons of extra time in the lab reviewing things... and I initially went as well thinking I needed the practice. But I hated every minute of it. I hated the required time I had to spend in anatomy, let alone spending non-required time there. This block I couldn't bring myself to go in beyond the required dissections, and I thought for sure I was going to get my butt kicked on the practical... but I didn't. You can actually figure almost everything out if you have a working knowledge of what's what.... even sight unseen.

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