Things I Could've Very Happily Lived the Rest of My Life Not Knowing (Or "Why Small Classes are Sometimes TOO Intimate")

Whether or not my instructor still has her uterus.

That my one classmate's vagina is very acidic.

Any/all information pertaining to this same classmate's vaginal discharge.

Oh!

And Crazy Anatomy Instructor Gem #2 (in which I feel like I've stepped back into a pathophys class from the late 1800s):

CRAZY ANATOMY INSTRUCTOR (CAI): Has anyone HERE had a urinary tract infection before?

ME: Yeah.

CAI: Are you married?

ME: No.

CAI: Oh. Well, oftentimes having sex can cause them. So usually, you know, with virgins, that's not a problem.

I feel mildly bad that I haven't posted here in so long (two months!), but this quarter has been kind of bland. I love the seminars I've been taking, but I haven't felt the urge to ramble on about them. And pathophys is, well, just pathophys. There's not much more to say about it other than that every single Wednesday I am gripped by the cold cold hand of my own mortality as we ramble on for two hours about all the horrible diseases that could kill us.

Awesome.

But last night, last night was BEYOND blog-worthy, so I figured it would be a crime not to break this blog's (inadvertent) silence and post about it.

For those of you who don't remember, I have Crazy Anatomy Instructor again for pathophys this semester. She is such a sweet woman, but she is BEYOND airheaded. WAY FAR BEYOND. If airheaded was floating up in the sky, Crazy Anatomy Instructor would be floating a good 400 feet above it.

Case in point was last-evening:

Crazy Anatomy Instructor is going over diseases of the urinary system, and she gets to talking about pregnancy and how a pregnancy can press on the bladder. To explain further, she decides to draw a picture of a uterus on the board while lecturing. Now, first off, historically all of her drawings of organs have been the type of drawings that, if you walked into the classroom and hadn't been sitting in on the lecture, you wouldn't have a clue what the hell the drawing is actually supposed to be representing: kidney? sperm? heart? large comma? man bending over backwards while holding an umbrella? Last night was no different.

This time, however, as we all bent over our notebooks, scribbling down notes about pregnancy and the bladder, she began to draw the blob-like, Don Hertzfeldt-esque uterus, and when I looked up, I was horrifed to find that she was drawing the uterus not on the dry-erase chalkboard BUT ON THE WHITE PROJECTOR-SCREEN THAT WAS PULLED DOWN OVER THE CHALKBOARD. And dry-erase markers dry-erase off of dry-erase chalkboards with no problem. But as most of us know, they don't so much dry-erase off of other things.

As she finished drawing her uterus, I looked over at my friend K___, and she looked back at me with deep dark horror in her eyes.

Needless to say, I was forced to spend the next half hour trying to stare only at my notes, because any time I would make eye contact with the uterus, it took every inch of willpower in my body not to start shaking with laughter. And of course what added to the situation was the fact that OUR INSTRUCTOR NEVER EVER EVER SUDDENLY NOTICED THAT SHE HAD DONE THIS. So for 30 minutes, I was forced to distract myself from the fact that whatever instructor pulled down the projector-screen next to show their overheads would be faced with a strange blue mutant-shaped uterus staring back at them.

When class finally let out, I barely made it down the hallway before erupting into hysterical peals of laughter that were so strong I could barely catch my breath.

I have not had such a good healthy laugh in a long long time.

And for that, I thank you, Crazy Anatomy Instructor.

I'm Trying SO Hard, I Swear to God

I'm doing my best to be positive this semester, despite having much fuel to ignite my negativity:

a) Last week I called the school to find out what time my seminar started this past Friday, spoke to THE MAN WHO DOES THE SCHEDULING, had him tell me a different time than what the desk told me, which I in turn remarked upon, to which he in turn went to look and doublecheck, to which he in turn returned with the following usefulness: "Yeah, it probably IS 6:30 like you said. But maybe just show up at 6:15 or so, just in case it's at 6." Awesome.

b) We're still without Bane of My Existence. *Another tear for that*

c) This past week I was forced to attend a weekend-long seminar despite being contagiously sick because, if I didn't attend, I would have to retake and repay for the whole goddamn seminar, and

c) I have Crazy Anatomy Instructor again this semester, though this time for pathophys.

I'd actually been ok with the final of these four items since she seems to flourish in a phys class rather than an anatomy, actually revealing how well she knows her shit (and actually being able to develop the ideas without reading word from word from the book).

But then yesterday stumbled into my lap. We're in the third week, and we're STILL getting through the tail-end of the first week's items on the syllabus (in other words, we're two weeks behind). Instead of just 'fessing up to the fact that she is like monkey-child crazy when it comes to time management, she blamed it on the material. Her remedy: teaching us from the test. "We got through cancer pretty in depth. But since we won't have gotten through everything else on the syllabus in time for the test, what I'll do is jump around briefly from topic to topic and teach from the test, and then if we have time, we'll go back and get more in depth with some of the stuff we've already gone over."

And then, to cap it off, her dry-erase marker ran out, so she took to drawing the rest of her diagrams explaining the metastasizing of cancer on a ratty piece of notebook paper that I'd ripped out of my notebook.

I give the school MAYBE two more years. And that's being EXTREMELY generous.

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.

Crazy Anatomy Instructor, Scene 4: Take 1

Crazy Anatomy Instructor stands in front of the classroom, discussing the musculature of the foot. She explains how one of the muscles aids in maintaining the lateral longitudinal arch of the foot. She pauses, looks like she is having a sudden bright idea, and then says, "Let's make it more visual so you can see what I mean."

She props her foot up on a chair hidden behind her desk. She points at her foot which is hidden behind her desk and which is propped on the chair also hidden behind her desk. She points at what is apparently the longitudinal arch that is hidden behind her desk on her foot which is hidden behind her desk and which is propped on the chair hidden behind her desk. She commences to point out the muscle and the longitudinal arch on her foot which is completely and absolutely obscured from the sight of every person sitting in the class.

She ends by saying, "See?"

. . . . . .

And I'm stuck with this woman again next semester, for *FOUR HOURS WORTH OF CLASS* on Monday nights. *Sobbing and choking a little*

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace Cadet

Yet another award-winning conversation with my anatomy instructor (whose class I missed on Monday) upon bumping into her at the bookstore yesterday:

ME: Oh, hey, Dr. ____. Sorry I missed your class yesterday. I got a flat tire.

INSTRUCTOR: That's ok. The secretary gave me the message you left with her yesterday.

ME: Oh, good, I'm glad. Yeah, by the time I managed to get the tire all fixed, I had already missed most of the class so I figured it wouldn't be worth driving all the way out.

INSTRUCTOR (long pause): That was last week, yes?

ME: Uh, no. That was yesterday.

INSTRUCTOR: Oh. Ok.

*long lingering uncomfortable confused silence*

Sockbiblefootheart!

Yesterday went something like this:

Big ol' shitty morning and afternoon. Chockfull of busy-ness. Finally time to leave for my chiro-adjustment and anatomy class. Go out to car. Notice back tire looks a wee bit low. Figure I might as well check it to avoid any major headaches on the road. Day suddenly turns into a lame-ass cartoon. Turn the little tire-nubbin so I can check the pressure with my gauge, and the whole nubbin just pulls right off in my hand, making the tire instantaneously deflate.

A fricking cartoon.

I try futilely to jam the damn thing back in with no luck, god only knows why as it is the equivalent of putting a toothpick up your pooter to keep your period from leaking out.

Spend the next 15 minutes jumping up and down on the tire-iron, trying to get the lug-nuts off with some sweet-ass leverage. Loosen two, but them bastardly air-tools that they use have rendered the other two immovable. Realize this finally, but not before the tire iron manages to actually pierce through the bottom of my shoe, somehow (thankfully) just barely missing out on piercing through my whole foot. You know how bibles every so often keep a bullet from piercing through someone's heart? Apparently my socks are that bible. And my foot is that heart. Sockbiblefootheart! Ah sweetness.

180+ lb. co-worker comes out and tries to help me loosen the lugnuts (because, yes, though I am a girl, I know how to change a tire, but no, my 120-lb. frame does not have the leverage necessary, apparently). Despite the fact that he's got at least 60 lbs. on me, he has no more luck in the leverage department.

Blessed be the mechanic nearby that senses my desperation over the phone and decides, since it's the end of the day, that he'll do a road call and change the tire for me with his very very large tire-iron (*waggling eyebrows*) and then patch the tire back up at the shop.

Needless to say, I end up missing my chiro-appointment. I also end up missing my anatomy class. I'm not really all that heartbroken about the latter really, given that it just means missing a class that has begun to grow increasingly and increasingly more difficult to bear for two hours.

Sample unbearability:

ME: So do we need to know the structure of the male hippopotamus's vagina for the test and stuff?

INSTRUCTOR: Um. I don't think so. No one *told* me you needed to know it.

(The next week, first question on the test: "What is the structure of the male hippopotamus's vagina?")

Sample unbearability #2:

ME: So I don't understand why I got #23 wrong when it clearly says in our More's anatomy book that the "superior attachment" for the internal intercostals is the inferior border of the superior rib?

INSTRUCTOR: Well, the test answer-key says it's the superior border of the inferior rib.

ME: Um, yeah. But the book says otherwise.

INSTRUCTOR: Well, the Tortorra anatomy book says what the test says.

ME: Um, so we're just supposed to know to memorize that one piece of information from the Tortorra book despite the fact that we've been using the More book all semester?

INSTRUCTOR: Well, the Tortorra book has the right answer in it. It's what you'll need to know for the state board exam.

ME: So seriously, you're not gonna give us credit for putting the answer that More has? Even though it's technically right?

INSTRUCTOR: *SIGH* I guess. I really probably shouldn't. But I will.

Yes. Probably a good thing I got the flat and ended up missing. Especially since my physiology midterm is tonight and I have the second half of that 22-hour seminar this weekend. *Sobbing just a little*

Man, how I wish I were a male hippopotamus's vagina right now. It would be a lot less stressful.

Raptors and Dali

Sometimes classes are just so surreal that they are worthy of their own Dali painting, spattered with ants and really long stretched-out boobs.

Last night was one of those.

My anatomy class is not getting any better. It still feels like it's being taught by someone who picked up the textbook about 30 minutes before class and has no clue WTF is going on.

Frequent quotes: "What page is that on? Does anyone know?" and "Yeah, I'm not really sure whether you need to know that or not."

Awesome.

Last night topped it all though. I managed to get stuck in just *RIDICULOUS* amounts of traffic. Probably the most I've seen in years. End result: I was 30 minutes late for class. When I got there, only two students had shown up, one of which gave me the most "Thank you god, I was about to start crying from the thought of having to endure two hours of this with only one other person as buffer" look I've ever seen. Thirty minutes late and apparently they hadn't even started.

Commence the lecture, which (as always) consists of our instructor bumbling around in the book, reading stuff directly from it (but somehow still managing to read it incorrectly so that she's accidentally teaching us the wrong things), and pointing at various diagrams in the book because apparently it is too much trouble to make overheads and apparently we are back in preschool with "One fish, two fish," our instructor reading and then showing us pictures and then reading and then showing us pictures.

As I near my breaking point, I try to distract myself from the furious anger whelling up inside me. I notice that the weird girl in class who sits without shoes or socks on in the middle of winter and who asks 1800-thousand questions constantly is sans shoes again. Our instructor comes over to show us a picture of something that she thinks we might need to know, but then again, maybe not. She is pointing at the picture in our textbook, and Weird Girl cocks her head back and gazes at it through the bottom of her eyes with her mouth wide open, inhaling and exhaling and inhaling and exhaling through it with a rattle that (accompanied with her awkwardly tall and skinny body) sounds startlingly like a raptor from Jurassic part, so much so that I prepare to start running and hide in some cabinet when she finally leaps up on the desks and starts hunting us. She clicks and rattles through her mouth until I am about ready to scream and rip off my scrubs and run around the room laughing maniacally because it is just so creepy and gross and somehow symbolic of how this class makes me feel itchy and insane and then, peace be to jesus, the class ends.

But not before this little gem:

HER: "Well, we didn't get to the blood-vessel stuff. So maybe I can just go over that next week right before the exam for you all?"
ME: "So will it BE on the exam then?"
HER: "Well, yes. I mean, if that's ok with everyone."
ME: "WTF, you motherf-ing ho-bag?!?! Seriously?!?! You're gonna go over it the DAY OF the exam and then test us on it five minutes later??? That's quality learning. Oh yes." ('Cept I didn't actually say that. I just thought it really really loud. While thinking about raptors.)

Why God Why

So apparently they switched up our instructors and, though I still have the Bane of My Existence for Phys on Tuesday nights, I now have THE WORLD'S WORST INSTRUCTOR EVER for Monday nights (thank god it's only for two hours).

I take that back--the Oscar for World's Worst Instructor Ever still belongs to my late great Ethics instructor (who I believe has since been fired). (Shockingly, she even beat out stiff competition from some of my high school instructors, one of which was 100% Grade-A crazy and would scream at us whenever we walked past the windows because she had a fear that we would fall out. And yet still, my Ethics instructor won by a landslide. That's some grade-a quality shittiness. But anyways...)

Now, I know I bitch a lot about many of my instructors at school, but I will readily admit that even the ones that bring me angst (like the Bane of My Existence, or the bitch I had my second semester whose shared dislike for one another neither of us even attempts to hide anymore) have taught me fairly well. Some better than others, of course. But I've learned (or at least been primed) well in their classes.

But this woman, o woe, peoples. I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt since it's the first week and I have a sneaking suspicion that they hired her last minute and threw her into this class with nary a word or explanation of how/what she should be teaching. But nonetheless--dear god.

I mean, she forgot the fricking syllabus/coursepack on the first day. I can't even tell you how many nightmares I've literally had in the last 8 years or so where I've forgotten to bring the syllabus to class on the first day--even after I was no longer teaching anymore, I *STILL* continued to have nervous nightmares about it. It's sorta like showing up to class and suddenly realizing you have no pants on. And even moreso in our A&P classes because basically the whole course hinges upon the coursepack as it's an outline of everything that we will be going over in class. And yet, she completely forgot to bring it.

The woman also takes about an hour to explain something that should easily take no more than 10 minutes to discuss. And then after doing so, she *REVIEWS* it. And by "reviewing" it, I mean that she literally repeats everything that she just said, just at a faster speed, and slightly less coherently.

She also is one of those people who reads directly out of the book for most of the lecture. And holy mother of god does this irritate me because why the hell should I drive all the way out there if I could sit down at home and teach this shit to myself? At least liven things up a bit. And know what the hell pages the material is on so that your fricking STUDENTS don't have to be the ones telling you every time you harriedly blurt "I can't figure out what page that is on."

And KNOW WHAT YOU'RE FRICKING TALKING ABOUT. This is my final point of contention--every A&P instructor I've had is able to talk about what they are teaching off the top of their heads. They are able to answer questions without looking the answers up. Occasionally one of them might be wrong, but then they correct themselves later.

This woman seems to have NO CLUE WHATSOEVER.

Every informative piece of her lecture has the cliffhanging quality of a really bad detective novel. "And the ligament that connects atlas to the axis is the... *DUH DUH DUH* (dramatic pause as she flips through pages to find the answer) the ATLANTO-AXIAL LIGAMENT!" Another mystery solved by the great Sherlock Holmes.

Pah.

So I'm gonna try to give her the benefit of the doubt. Try try try. But I know it's not just me--after one hour of last night's class, one of the other students told us first thing on break that he was switching to the day class. After only an hour of her lecture.

All I can say is PLEASE DEAR GOD LET IT JUST BE THAT IT'S HER FIRST WEEK OF CLASS, because if the pacing and animatedness she brings to the classroom doesn't improve at least (and if she doesn't stop reading directly out of the book the whole time), I am gonna have a very hard time staying awake and/or not stabbing myself in the eardrum out of boredom.

If nothing else, I guess the past year has made me realize that being a really good instructor isn't as easy as it looks, that it really *DOES* take mad talent to be good at teaching. So think about that a bit, and next time you bump into some instructor or another that really changed your life or whose class you absolutely adored and learned tons from, thank them. And maybe, just maybe, dry hump them a little in appreciation.