The Not-So-Gross Anatomy Tour!

On Wednesday morning, two teacher assistants from the MED Program came over to give us a Gross Anatomy tour, which is a class most students must take during medical school. We couldn’t actually visit the lab because a class was using it, so they brought freeze-dried slides to our classroom. The slides actually resembled the BODIES Exhibition that came to Southpoint Mall last year, where real cadavers are preserved for further research or exhibitions.

My group received a large slide of an elderly man’s head where we could see parts of his cerebellum, the remnants of arteries that flow to the brain, his nasal cavities, and even a part of his ear! Next, we saw a slide of the thorax which included the lungs, a small part of the heart, ribs, and the spinal cord. The teacher assistant’s told us that the MED students have to dissect a cadaver’s torso, but in medical school, you actually have to dissect from head to toe!

Although that might seem gross to some, I’d actually LOVE to dissect a cadaver and hold a real brain or heart in my very own hands! After analyzing the rest of the slides, we could ask the TA’s questions about the MED program, their undergraduate experience, and the ins and outs of their first year of medical school. I really enjoyed getting an African American female’s perspective on science and the medical field, and I received some great advice. The TA’s, Cintasha and Kira, were very inspiring and were living proof that African American females CAN be intelligent and successful (as if I didn’t know that before! ) Because of them, I am considering medicine as a second career choice after pharmacy.

It’s now crunch time as our final exams begin next week. Wish me luck!