anatomy of a gross anatomy exam:
7:55 am: arrive in the halls outside the 5th floor anatomy labs; stow backpacks in locker; clipboard in hand.
7:58: professor passes out answer sheet: 2 pages, 26 numbers, a and b for each number, one number circled in red; enter lab.
7:59: standby at the cadaver station corresponding to your circled number for buzzer to sound.
8:00: buzzer buzzes; find the little pin somewhere in the body, stuck into nerve, vein, artery, lymph duct, muscle, fascia, organ, or something you hope you can recognize; answer the 2-part question corresponding to pinned item; do this before the buzzer sounds again in 1 minute, 45 seconds.
8:01.45-8:46: move to next cadaver/question, and repeat above, twenty-five more times.
Important rules: The anatomy exam is not comprehensive, but only covers the dissections from the past three weeks: the thoracic cavity (heart, lungs, and everything around them and within your rib cage) and the neck. You cannot touch the cadavers. This is hard, because you’re quite used to touching them (with gloves, of course) to see where vessels are coming from and where they’re going. This is especially hard for the heart questions, because the hearts have been removed and seemingly haphazardly placed on the table in various rotations; it takes too much time to get your heart bearings. You can’t go back to any of the stations or questions; once the buzzer buzzes, you must move on.
Of note: I imagine that we’re a funny group of test-takers to watch. We stretch our heads and necks as far as we can in and around the cadaver to see what’s going; we often palpate our own bodies to figure out the action of a muscle, or where on the body geography to listen for the mitral valve or the best breath sounds. I dropped my pencil at one point, and worried it would fall into the body; it bounced off and fell on the floor instead; I had to pick it up and keep using it, of course.
When the anatomy exam is finished, move on the histolab, for an exam similar to the anatomy, except with 26 microscope stations instead of cadavers, then move on to that much more comforatble physiology exam with 8-option multiple choice questions and entire blank pages on which to diagram the baroflex response to a hemorrhage.
And repeat again in 3 weeks.
But now: a nap, and then a run on the most gorgeous clear, blue fall day.
