Because anatomy is over and that’s sad.
Attending: Well, let’s think about how our vocal folds work. When you’re not speaking, are they open or closed?
Student 1: .. Open?
Attending: *waits*
Student 2: … Partially open?
Attending: *waits*
Me: … Closed?
Attending: No, then you can’t breathe and you die.
Attending: After the duodenum, what percent of the small intestine is the jejunum?
Student: Half.
Attending: No. 3/5ths. And what percent is the ileum?
Student: 2/5ths?
Attending: No. 3/5ths.
Student: … I think I heard you wrong.
Attending: No, you heard me right.
Me: This dissection is so sad. I don’t know what any of this stuff is.
Student #1: Me nei- wait! Check it, this is awesome.
Me: What is it?
Student #1: It’s glandular! I bet it’s a tumor
Me: Cool! It’s a –
Attending: – pancreas. That would be a pancreas.
Action Potential 
Okay, a couple of my classmates and I are wondering something about med school. Do you have 1 or 2 semesters of anatomy? We figured one since you don’t have to learn more than one species (we have two, fall = canine, feline, swine. Spring: equine, bovine, ovine, caprine, and poultry).
Oh man, keeping all that species anatomy straight would be so far beyond me it’s not even funny. That’s crazy impressive.
The average time for med school anatomy is about one semester, but there are a handful of schools that just do an intensive 1-2 months, and a handful of schools that do a full year, decelerated.
I’m really glad we do 1 semester – 2 months seems like it would be cramming to the extent I’d have trouble retaining it, and 1 year is a long time to smell like formalin if you don’t have to!
I will not be sad when Anatomy is behind me–we have 2 years of it. Every week it culminates in a 30 min pimp sessions where about 15 of us sit in rows and our prof fires questions at us regarding the current case. Course now that we have a year and a half of cases behind us he figures they are all fair game as well. I spend most of Thursday evening and Friday morning feeling nauseated in anticipation. If you get something *really* wrong (like saying facial is sensory to the face) he tells you how you should go kill yourself. Actually.
Whoa.. two years. You guys must really know your anatomy by the time clinicals roll around. I can see how the cases would be kind of nice.
Haha, “facial is sensory to the face”… while I agree that that’s *really* wrong, one of my (very sleep-deprived) friends was talking about the “fibula of the uterine tubes” the other day. I would love to have seen your attending’s reaction to that one… 🙂
hahah, I love the random shit that comes out in exam time…I’ll never forget my study buddy guessing “simian crease?” when I was grilling her about types/clinical presentation of anemia. To this day neither of us know where that came from but whenever simian crease is mentioned we both crack up (looking like completely un-PC jerks).
Yeah, the school is HUGE on anatomy. Not sure if that is some weird British-system throw back to Days of Olde or what…
okay, so question for you human anatomists. Do humans have manica flexoria? Carnivores do and that was one of the random questions we got on our first semester final. That and the epitrochlear anconeus muscle. That was Dr. K’s favorite muscle. Don’t ask me what his favorite organ is. Lets just say I know way to much about the bulbus glandis.
We have a very lovely anconeus that’s located epitrochlearly, although I’ve never heard it referred to as “epitrochlear” before!
No manica flexoria, although from googling it sounds like it might be related to the human common flexor sheath.
Bulbus glandis, I had to google. And now I, too, can say I know way too much about it! (Though my definition of “too much” = 1 wikipedia page, so… yeah, you win times infinity.)
I need to start following more vet student blogs. Your anatomy stories are way more interesting!
Yeah, the anconeus is a distinct muscle in and of itself. In a cat, they have both the anconeus and the epitrochlear anconeus muscle. It is unique to cats and given its microscopic size I have no clue what function it serves.
Veterinary anatomy can be pretty fun. Our bovine and small ruminant GI practical exam had probably the best tag possible. Dr. K had a bovine skeleton in the lab and strung rope in such a way there was an X located near the abdominal/thoracic demarkation. He asked us what organ was located at where the X was. It was an obvious question if you remembered the most common cause of pericarditis in cattle (hardware disease). If you forgot that a foreign object puncturing the reticulum and entering the thoracic cavity was the culprit then it would have been a hard question.
Other fun in anatomy lab was that we didn’t have a pulley system in our lab so we had to cart our full grown horses on gurneys (laying on their back and legs tied to pulls for stability) in and out of the walk in cooler everyday we were doing equine anatomy. I wish I had a video of that. It was like tetris trying to get 8 horses into that cooler.
I like reading med student blogs because I like to compare our training with yours. The outcome of both programs is the same, we both will be practing medicine but the training process is very different.
One of the good/bad things at our school is that we really don’t put that much emphasis on anatomy. We only have one or two sessions a month, and we’re not really ever formally tested on it.
This is kinda good, because it saves us the pointless memorization that a lot of non-orthopod people have to do for their anatomy sessions (I defy any other doctor to list off all the ligaments in the foot and hand). The logic is that the common anatomy things will keep coming up in practice and will become ingrained in our collective brains.
This is kinda bad, because….well, we don’t really learn anatomy.
Interesting! See, we get slammed by some other med schools in the area because we take our practical tests in groups (we can consult with 3 other students for answers) instead of being tested individually. Sounds like they’d have a field day with your school. 🙂
Can’t say I argue with the logic of how your school does it, that’s for sure.