Gimme Gimme Gimme Brain-Food!

Yesterday, Chiro-man asked me at my appointment, "So is the nerve-pain in your quads?" and I had to pause and think a second about which set of muscles were the quads before answering.

And then I had to double-check after my appointment in my anatomy book in the car, just to make sure I wasn't a total retard and that the quads WERE, in fact, the ones in the front of the thigh.

I hate this.

I am so super-envious, blindingly and fiendishly so, of the folks who know these things without having to think about them.

I want to be them already.

I want it to already be the day where if someone refers to, say, the tibialis anterior, I don't have to take 10 seconds to think about what the fuck muscle that is exactly.

I want to be able to instinctively reach out and touch the precisely correct area when somebody tells me their levator scapula is bothering them (although, now that I've said that, I've realized that most people wouldn't know enough about anatomy themselves to recognize that it is in fact their levator scapula that is bothering them--most folks would just point, and say "It hurts here"--but STILL!).

I want I want I want to have all that knowledge squooshed all up in the grayish crinkles of my brain already, goddammit.

Seriously... I am in absolute awe of people like Chiro-Man and Bane of My Existence who can just rattle that shit off like it's their phone number or something, down to the smallest of crazy-science details.

And I'm in awe of folks who have such a complete understanding of the body, that all they have to do is a two-second rotation of a body-part to know wtf is wrong with it. And then two seconds to fix it. And then no more pain.

I am in awe of the folks who, when asked complicated physiological questions, get all geeked out and rattle off the explanations to you excitedly, without even batting an eyelash, as though they were born with the knowledge, as though it were the greatest thing since sliced bread, as though they are still blown away by how amazing the body is, even after all these years.

Granted, I know they've probably been studying this stuff for a LONG LONG time and I've only been for a year and a half, but I wanna teletransport myself to their state of knowledge. And I don't wanna forget the shit I'm learning--this is the biggest thing. As I move from semester to semester, without relearning the same things over and over, they're kinda fluffing out of my brain, like giant flaky brainy dandruff. And THAT'S NO GOOD.

And it makes me angry sometimes to feel so far away from this brilliant state of understanding, partially because our school sucks when it comes to making the connection between abstract anatomy to applied anatomy and I want to be able to make those connections.

I mean, fuck! Let me poke some bones on somebody, let me squeeze the fuck out of a muscle, let me jam my fingers around somebody's vertebra, so I know where the damn thing IS on a real human being, not just where it's drawn on a fricking piece of glossy paper with arrows and labels--that's what I say. (I am kind of interested in taking a gross anatomy class for that very reason--that and because I'm intrigued by the whole metaphysical experience of being around a dead body. But that's a whole 'nother story.)

Which brings me back to my anatomy class this semester:

Our crazy anatomy instructor this semester read EVERY SINGLE QUESTION ON THE FINAL TO US AND TOLD US THE CORRECT ANSWER TO EVERY SINGLE QUESTION ON THE FINAL.

And this is how we're supposed to learn?

Rote memorization?

Being encouraged to study only the exact answers that were given to us instead of processing everything so that it all makes sense?

Fuck.

It's no wonder I can't remember where the hell the quads are.