You Have Been Warned

Last semester marked the end of general anatomy, though we still have comparative anatomy this semester. Having done the musculoskeletal system and thorax in first year, that left the head and abdomen. The division of learning was interesting: out of ten labs, seven were on the head, and three were on everything else.

I'm not sure who thought that was the best idea. If you ask me, they could probably have just made some sort of neuroanatomy/neurophysiology course to take the place of one of our useless ones (because sadly we have several that are a complete waste of time). It would seem to me that the abdomen is pretty important--think about how much a vet has to work with it, between the stomach and intestines, kidneys and bladder, and urogenital system. I'd imagine we're going to see a lot of spays/neuters, dogs swallowing things they shouldn't, horses with colic (abdominal pain), cats with urinary tract diseases, and everything else you can think of. Yet for some reason our learning of the anatomy of those things was all in one lab.

The last lab was so huge, in fact, that there was a giant warning page at the beginning of the preparation section and the dissection instructions. It very disapprovingly states that if you've gotten into the habit of not finishing, or even starting, the preparation sections, you had better get your act together because this module 10 is intense. It makes a point of reminding everyone that if you don't complete the preparation section and you get caught, you'll fail the lab.

Note: Writing this now since starting comparative anatomy, and looking at last semester's lab book, it saddens me to notice that lab 10 in it's massive enormity of reading, questions, and dissection, is still smaller than the work required for comparative anatomy. The first lab was 30 pages. The second lab was 40.