Hanging with Yorick

Laurel and I spent some quality time in the pods today getting inside my skull. And I mean that literally, not figuratively.

If my blog were an anatomy atlas, I would draw in a bunch of arrows and walk you through the million foramina, fossae, and fissures therein. Thankfully, for the sake of both your sanity and mine, it isn't. Quirky person that I am, though, I will walk you through our time of hardcore studying.

He started out by sampling my caramel macchiato - I'm sure (I hope) coffee-making techniques have advanced for the better since his heyday.

Sadly, between the two of us, we polished it off pretty quick.

It potentially wasn't our brightest idea to caffeinate him, though. Pretty soon, he dived auditory meatus-first into 21st century technology, commandeering Laurel's iPod and rocking out to Outkast...

...after which he proceeded to chat up a storm of bone dust, and showed me a pencil tattoo under his eye socket that read "infraorbital fossa."

At some point, we gave up on the pretense of studying and spend many precious moments staring creepily at Laurel, much to her chagrin. Or amusement. I'm still not sure which.

We were having such a swell time, we didn't even realize it was time for solemn farewells.

On the bright side, we had a jaw-droppingly amazing time. Being crazy creepers.

(Shout-outs to Laurel, Dr. Pumplin, and Shakespeare)

Anatomy of Stuffing

I got back home last night around 11:45pm after an afternoon/evening of studying that started around 2:30pm and existed to highly variable degrees of productivity (often at the zeroth one - and that should totally be an ordinal!). First order of business, use my $5 Amazon mp3 credit, expiring in 15 minutes. And I now have a brand new album to check out! (Thanks for the help, DTD =))

Maybe it was the late hour, maybe I was finally cracking, but as I aimlessly spun around in my chair, my eyes alighted on my stuffed animals and I found myself idly wondering what their abdominal anatomy looked like. Say what?? My anatomy vision didn't get me too far, though -- all that stuffing got in the way, especially with Raja. And Sly was just too small for me to imagine much of anything. I was trying to superimpose a liver, which would dominate his entire front and then some. Oops. Just for reference, pictures:

Sly's the impish/sleepy raccoon in the middle

And Raja is the ginormous tiger Erik is cuddling up to

Of course, the logical progression from trying to visualize Raja's intestinal structure was to Google stuffed animal anatomy! Of course. It took some digging (and I somehow managed to restrain myself for a whole 24 HOURS before more fully indulging my craziness), but I found something super-cool! This answers almost all of my unresolved, burning questions about the innards of my stuffed raccoon, though I think there may be no hope for Raja:

Okay, so he's made of gummy stuff, whatever that's made of, and not teddy bear stuffing, but close enough. And he's a bear, not a raccoon, but it works, somehow. And, talk about AWESOME. The digital artistry, the level of detail, just...wow. I am blown away.

And the artist, Jason Freeny, happened to have something that tied in semi-perfectly with what I've spent the last couple of hours tackling: the female reproductive system.

Okay, so this image jumps ahead a few months, but close enough. Umbilical cord! Hemostats! Fertilization! HUGE BRAIN! Oh, wait, that's exam 3. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

And this last one is especially for Kevin:

I shouldn't be allowed near my blog after, say, 8pm, because my mental processes start breaking down. Clearly.

Bunnies and Inspiration

This whole blogging thing is more difficult than I gave it credit for, in terms of both frequency and content. How can I be expected to be consistently witty? I'm already using all my spare mental powers (of which there aren't many to begin with) to remember how best to permanently maim people --err, I mean, keep them ambulatory and healthy!

Speaking of witty, let's start with a story, because that's obviously a logical segue.

In an effort to keep up with my daily phone calls to my mom, I call her at 7:30 every morning on my way to lecture. After the morning pleasantries, the conversation always starts with her asking, "So, what's new?" Now, back when med school started (I say with a heavy sigh, as this was all of 7 weeks ago), I was all excited to give her the full run-down on fun facts from lecture the previous day or the latest body muscles/organs we had dissected out. To her credit, she wasn't at all grossed out, not even when I hesitantly told her about dissecting a breast.

All of seven weeks later, I'm already exhausted and grasping at straws for conversations that feel like they're coming earlier and earlier in the morning. Granted, fall's onset and the whole dark-at-7-am thing isn't helping. I'm a pseudo-morning person (by which I mean I'm not NOT a morning person, double negative intended), but all I can muster is, "Eh, studying -- nothing exciting." To which my mom pretty justly replies "What do you mean, nothing exciting?? You learn something new every day about your body, that should be very exciting! And then you get to dissect it out."

She's right, of course, as mothers are wont to be (darn them, except not really -- it's part of what we love about them, their extraordinary cooking skills being the other part). (Kidding!). But, back to the point. She's right. Every day IS exciting, even if I'm too tired in the mornings to fully appreciate this. And maybe this is just me being desperate to find the silver lining during our pre-exam week when we are all frantically studying our asses off and hoping we'll pass next Monday, but that doesn't make it any less true.

So we have 5238 bazillion arteries and nerves to memorize -- but just consider what an amazing work of art that makes our bodies. So sometimes our cadavers don't quite help us out as much as we'd hope/like -- there are a dozen other great dissections to check out to make up for it, and really, they're doing the best they can. So Merchanthaler's histo reviews confuse the bejeezus out of us -- ok, even I can't find the silver lining in this, except as Zeke keeps pointing out, he'd probably be hilarious to go out drinking with.

Heck, a handful of us managed to have fun this Saturday, courtesy of inter-pod communication! This sounds highly sophisticated and technical, but really, it was me, Zeke, and Laurel doodling back and forth on the glass separating walls with Prajna, Hannah, and Jared. About the reproductive system (mad props to Prajna for her off-the-charts doodling skills). And bunnies. And Zeke. Thumper! Followed by Pickles!

Point being: Don't let the stress and intensity get to you (she says hypocritically). Treat this time like the stepping stone it is, and kick back while you're at it (though not so far back that you fall out of your chair, *cough* Kevin *cough*). Rock on! \m/