Biology students are perhaps serial killers in training

Hello interwebs! Long time no see, you seem to have gotten more bloated since last we met!

I've been ridiculously busy with my anatomy class. Fast track is brutal. While mostly disgusted with the material, I have been learning useful bits of information that may help in future efforts to help my CPR students to not kill someone in a life or death emergency.

Mostly though, I've discovered that anyone taking biology or going into medical training has to be incredibly morbid and twisted. Historically, researching the physiology of the human body was difficult as it was hard to make observations of a person's innards because skin was often in the way. Heck, early medical students would sneak bodies out of graveyards in order to cut them open to observe what the guts looked like. I will never look at a game of Operation the same way.

Torturing small animals seems to be the favorite way to discover things. For example, to figure out how muscles worked, one experiment has weights put on the calf muscle of a frog at increasing amounts and measuring the electric charge put out. Then there's the experiment where the frogs (while still alive!) were cut open and flooded with saline and had the fluids switched around to demonstrate neurotransmitters and their effect on heart rate! And the rant about injecting small animals with things, and cutting parts off just to see what will happen will have to wait for another time. Besides, my brief temp job many years ago in a medical research facility scarred me plenty on that score.

Then there's my fellow classmates. I have the fortune and bad karma to sit next to people in lab who are really into anatomy. They're the ones who always ask about how things might look fresh, how much force it would take to crack certain bones, which arteries would cause instant death from bleeding out, and so forth. They also break concepts down very easily and use mnemonic devices I can understand, which is useful for exams. However, I have yet to get through a dissection lab without wanting to fervently be somewhere else, because every single time they go at the body parts with gusto like it's a steak and lobster dinner at the fanciest restaurant in New York. It also doesn't help that they fondle the things as they go. FONDLE! The cow heart lab was particularly disturbing on that detail.

I have five more weeks of this class before I'm free to return to the safe world of dietetics and telling people how to eat better. Luckily, no one has offered to have me in a study group, so my personal information is safe from anyone who may decide to observe what *my* innards look like. Also, wish me luck on getting internships, their availability will decide if I can graduate in one more year instead of two!

My Brain Refuses to Retain Any of this Nonsense

First of all, it was not fun nursing a cold/sinus infection for over a week. I'm still coughing and draining my sinuses, but no longer as severely. What makes colds and the like much more problematic for me is that any change in pressure to my head cavities seems to set off my Meniere's syndrome. Also I discovered during yoga class that any pose that requires me to be on my back with my legs up is likely to set off a vertigo spell. Not cool.

So President's day weekend was spent trying to study up for the next round of lab and lecture exams in biology while wishing I could take Nyquil intravenously. The particular subject we had just finished covering was muscles and neurophysiology. I did not enjoy having to seriously ogle the cadaver, knowing I would have to identify a muscle on it for the exam. Even though it was a dried out husk of a person, my subconscious kept going, "DEADBODYDEADBODYDEADBODYDEADBODY," and the formaldehyde stench did not help.

I also learned that week from one of my culinary classmates that people can be allergic to formaldehyde! She had discovered her husband had it the hard way, when they had new floor put in. Apparently though, she was fortunate to have left a pot of corn beef boiling on the stove when they left the house for the workers to put in said floor. The workers left earlier than expected, so no one was watching the kitchen. It seems that burnt food smell overwhelms the senses, and will drive out the smell of formaldehyde. Maybe I can convince my biology teacher I am allergic, since every time the cadaver room was opened for viewing, my eyes teared up something fierce. I do not look forward to the smell assaulting my senses again, nor having to look at a sheep's brain being dissected.

Anyways, Monday afternoon I pulled a three-hour cram session trying to prepare for the lab test. After that long, I felt I deserved a reward for dealing with nonsense I won't be using, as I doubt anyone in dietetics or the culinary world would ask me about sebaceous glands or to recite the flexors and extensors of the limbs. I decide to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Not too bad as study breaks go, as I even had the great idea that the best reward for passing anatomy classes would be the ability to build one's very own Rocky. However, Tuesday evening I get home at 7:30pm, much too sore to continue studies on the cellular mechanisms of muscle contraction and the process of action potentials in muscle fibers and neurons, so I hop in the tub and then put the movie soundtrack on to wind down. So Wednesday morning, guess what is still going through my head? Not all the silly terminology for muscle cells, the nervous system, or any of that stuff I'm supposed to be retaining for my exam, but the dang soundtrack to Rocky Horror, along with Tim Curry dancing around as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. *facepalm*

To make matters worse, during morning lab, my classmates are tossing around memory tricks they've picked up for all this clinical science jargon. One guy mentioned salt and bananas, and next thing I know, I'm picturing bananas foster, melting all over a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Also, Rocky Horror was still playing in my head as background music. ARGH!

Needless to say, I am quite certain that out of the 80 questions on that exam, I answered 30 correctly. Although afterwards I did check with the nutrition program director to confirm that, yes, a C- grade in the course would be sufficient. I am so glad I decided not to pursue nursing, those poor schlubs have to pull a B or better to have their biology classes qualify for the prerequisites of their medical training. Still, if dietetics doesn't pan out, perhaps I could try integrative nutrition. Would anyone be interested in a nutritional consultant that doubled as a personal chef?