Just 'Cause: Two Anatomy Top Tens Worth Dropping Your Blades For
By Mitesh Popat M'07
Top 10 Things Not To Do In Anatomy Lab
10. Play hoops with things called fascia or adipose (personal experience talking here...).
9. Vehemently argue a point when you really don't know what the hell you're talking about.
8. Dig in the pockets of your scrubs. Oh what wonders you may discover like things that were flying through the air in the previous lab. Eh-hem.
7. Use your cadaver as an equipment holder. We know the spaces between the vertebrae are cool, but, you know...
6. Teach your visiting professor about anatomy. "The [insert nerve] is here, the [insert artery] is here, the [insert favorite muscle] is there."
5. Skip about the room like Pippi Longstocking. Though I must say that would be a trip.
4. Hit the TAM prior to deciding your lab-mates don't know what they're doing. We know they're dull (the blades), but you could still hurt someone.
3. Pick up your dissecting table as if doing a dead lift with your gluteal muscles flung posteriorly. There are easier ways to drain the table.
2. Ask questions that your anatomy professor doesn't know. You might get an exposé on some unrelated random anatomy. Worse still, you might get a mangled SITS, Tom Dick AN Harry, or other god-awfully named anatomical landmark.
1. Walk around the room, slapping people on the ass, alive and dead. (Truth be told, this one could go on either list.)
Top 10 Things To Do In Anatomy Lab
10. Send a member of your group on counterinsurgent missions. "NO! The piriformis is in the anterior medial thigh and the pectineus is in the pectoral girdle, while the popliteus is the muscle you're looking at, right now, in the gluteal region!"
9. Throw the heart into the bucket of funk, also known as the slop bucket or bucket of unsolved mysteries.
8. Bring watercolors so that things match how they look in Netters.
7. Tear your scrubs so you can rant and rave how your cadaver took a lunge at you. You may be the only one at your dissection table after that. That may be good or bad depending on whether the cadaver actually lunged at you.
6. Sit on a stool with your acoustic guitar and belt out some good ol' Dolly Parton. Alternatively, you could do interpretive renditions of "sounds of farm animals."
5. Get in with your cadaver before your lab-mates arrive. Oh, the precious looks on their faces.
4. Bring nunchakus to class and challenge Professor Kwan to a duel. Sorry Bruce Lee, my money's on Kwan.
3. Walk up to random people (that would be outside of anatomy lab, young one), and poke them on the part of the body we are dissecting, and say "I just wanted to get a sense of the living I'm a medical student." And then run like hell.
2. Bring wine, cheese, grapes, and candles to do it like the old school anatomists used to do.
1. Jump in the long sink. Be sure to bring your rubber ducky.