As some of you may know, I’ve been auditing a Human Morphology class this term. FYI-human morphology is just a fancy way of saying anatomy class. Anyway, it’s basically the class that all the first year med school students take, which means that 1) I don’t know anyone in it and 2) they sometimes forget that there’s one non-med school student in the class and neglect to mention helpful details to me. What this means is that for the past few weeks I’ve been sitting in the back areas of the lecture hall, keeping to myself and anticipating/dreading what was coming today: the first dissection lab. Now mind you, the dissections are, in some ways, the real reason why I’m even sitting in on the course. Granted the modern dissection process is a wee bit different than what it was 200 years ago, but anatomy and dissection are actually the few components of modern medicine that aren’t earth-shatteringly different than they were back in ye olden times. However, what was making me nervous about going to the labs for the first time today was the fact that, until today, the class had been giving me this weird wow-its-like-being-back-in-high-school vibe. That is, the med school students all know each other and have these weird little cliques going on, and I wasn’t really sure how they’d react to my being in the lab today.

It is therefore to my huge relief that I can say the lab went really well! The dissections themselves are, fortunately, much more fascinating than they are creepy. And as a bonus, I got a few moments of moderate fame today by getting an introduction by the prof to the pre-lab guest lecturer, being mentioned by the lecturer in the lecture, and by having mutual friends with the TA at our lab table. That’s right baby, having been at this school for 5 years has its advantages, little smarty pants first-year med students! ;-) But honestly, I feel glad that even though I’m still a bit of an outsider in the class, I’m still hanging in there and getting to have a really amazing experience. This is something that very few people outside of medicine ever really get to be a part of, and I’m genuinely grateful to have the opportunity to participate in this.