Class of 2022...how you doin'?

[TheGirlWithTheFernTattoo]

We can’t touch (technically), and I think that is perfectly fair IF the specimen is good quality, the tagged item is obviously visible, and the specimen is arranged in a way that maximizes what you can see.

We often use fresh and instructor specimens for exams, so they are clean and well dissected.

If you tag a nerve, and don’t have it obviously visible where it dives then not letting you move things or touch isn’t really that fair.

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[battie]

We can’t touch (technically), and I think that is perfectly fair IF the specimen is good quality, the tagged item is obviously visible, and the specimen is arranged in a way that maximizes what you can see.

We often use fresh and instructor specimens for exams, so they are clean and well dissected.

If you tag a nerve, and don’t have it obviously visible where it dives then not letting you move things or touch isn’t really that fair.

And I would say 95% of the questions from my two years of vet med anatomy were fair. Even between 7 different profs over that 2 years.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

We get to move touch things on our anatomy exams unless its something like a tiny nerve or vessel...some of those tags touching and moving around tissue is the only way to figure out what's tagged. I could see it working either way but I would be curious to compare if some of our anatomy questions would ever come up at schools you aren't allowed to touch

Same! the tiny ones they say not to pull or touch lol

Ooh that's an interesting thought. They def tag things you could never see without moving stuff for us. Wonder if they couldn't tag certain things with the no moving rule lol

 

[MixedAnimals77]

Same! the tiny ones they say not to pull or tough lol

Ooh that's an interesting thought. They def tag things you could never see without moving stuff for us. Wonder if they couldn't tag certain things with the no moving rule lol

@SkiOtter add peeps for the pm

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

We can’t touch (technically), and I think that is perfectly fair IF the specimen is good quality, the tagged item is obviously visible, and the specimen is arranged in a way that maximizes what you can see.

We often use fresh and instructor specimens for exams, so they are clean and well dissected.

If you tag a nerve, and don’t have it obviously visible where it dives then not letting you move things or touch isn’t really that fair.

See for us they mostly use the specimens we have dissected, not the ones the professors have. so a lot of times, things aren't clear without a little digging

they will also tag 2 structures on the same specimen that can't be viewed simultaneously

 

[SkiOtter]

See for us they mostly use the specimens we have dissected, not the ones the professors have. so a lot of times, things aren't clear without a little digging

they will also tag 2 structures on the same specimen that can't be viewed simultaneously

It’s mostly our animals that get used too. They just pick ones where the thing they’re pinning is clear on that animal.

And we just use more. It’s not difficult to just use more animals.

 

[battie]

See for us they mostly use the specimens we have dissected, not the ones the professors have. so a lot of times, things aren't clear without a little digging

We do the same. Lol. Lots of motivation to have good dissections, cause if you dont, you'll lose some points.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

I guess we're interpreting the purpose of anatomy lab differently then. For our school, all of first year is just getting acquainted with normal, including anatomy. It's a memorization fest from beginning to end. I even took it twice due to my repeat and anatomy was straight up my worst subject both times. The thing is, they have to get 130 people through 40 stations in 3 hours with how we do our exams, and we only have 2 exams a quarter. So I honestly can't see how we could let people touch the specimens and get the practical done in 40 minutes (with 20 minutes to get back to computers and type in answers).

We did have 1 prof that did 10 you pin it questions (between 2 specimens) and 1 arrow question with a secondary applied question to the arrow question. So there wasn't time to do more than 10 you pin its. Is that enough questions to adequately test all of the anatomy of 4 weeks? Depends on who you talked to. Our anatomy staff didn't like those questions because not everyone is tested on the same questions. So that's arguably not fair.

To be honest, I think it's terribly unfair for us to do multiple choice tests. My undergrad did almost all essays, which I was pretty good at. Frankly, the way we do our testing overall is unfair for people like me who don't test well to begin with.

But life isn't fair, so you gotta adapt.

Edit: realized that I didn't address the "we won't be expected to just look at an animal and know what's wrong". Very true! We also won't be able to move around their insides the same way we do in anatomy, if at all. We also won't have the isolated tracts or hearts or any of that. So anatomy doesn't really lend itself (at least in our curriculum) to translating to medicine directly. It's just purely so we learn the structures.

We have 40 stations also, but 72 people (with no computers involved), so maybe that's why they let us touch, not sure?

Again, I never said anatomy wasn't a memorization fest. It is, and I hate it. But it is also important to understand how structures relate to one another and I feel like allowing students to touch helps with that Though I see it may not be practical as it seems you have nearly double the number of students

I'm not sure I follow the you pin it thing

 

[SkiOtter]

We have 40 stations also, but 72 people (with no computers involved), so maybe that's why they let us touch, not sure?

Again, I never said anatomy wasn't a memorization fest. It is, and I hate it. But it is also important to understand how structures relate to one another and I feel like allowing students to touch helps with that Though I see it may not be practical as it seems you have nearly double the number of students

I'm not sure I follow the you pin it thing

We do three groups. So there’s under 45 students in the lab at a time for the practical portion. Still no computers in the lab. You get a paper and your clipboard and have to transfer them later.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

It’s mostly our animals that get used too. They just pick ones where the thing they’re pinning is clear on that animal.

And we just use more. It’s not difficult to just use more animals.

I'm not sure I am following. Sometimes it is more difficult. Our profs explicitly state they don't want cadavers to be wasted for this purpose.

We do the same. Lol. Lots of motivation to have good dissections, cause if you dont, you'll lose some points.

You get graded on your dissections?

 

[SkiOtter]

And the practical isn’t really the time to be figuring out how all the structures relate. You should have done that in lab and been able to identify where each thing is going. *shrug*

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

We do three groups. So there’s under 45 students in the lab at a time for the practical portion. Also no computers in the lab. You get a paper and your clipboard and have to transfer them later.

Right, I understand that. We do not have to transfer ours. Our professors photocopy ours so they aren't dealing with papers covered in formalin lol.

How much time do you get for 40 structures?

 

[battie]

I'm not sure I follow the you pin it thing

They give you 2 or 3 specimens. So for the midterm Ski just took, I had an isolated dog heart and a cow thorax that was dissected out, but intact in that all the structures were there together. I had 10 questions that I had to pin on those two structures. So it would be, "On the dog heart, pin the structure that is the remnant of the structure that allowed fetal circulation to bypass the lungs," or "Pin the location you would do a thoracocentesis".

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

And the practical isn’t really the time to be figuring out how all the structures relate. You should have done that in lab and been able to identify where each thing is going. *shrug*

it's like talking to a brick wall
Bye y'all

 

[SkiOtter]

I'm not sure I am following. Sometimes it is more difficult. Our profs explicitly state they don't want cadavers to be wasted for this purpose.

You get graded on your dissections?

What cadavers are getting wasted

We are now, but I think that’s a new thing.
I think she's saying if it’s not dissected well enough you won’t be able to figure out where things are and what this structure is and you’ll lose points.

 

[SkiOtter]

Right, I understand that. We do not have to transfer ours. Our professors photocopy ours so they aren't dealing with papers covered in formalin lol.

How much time do you get for 40 structures?

We get one minute per question.

 

[TheGirlWithTheFernTattoo]

Iirc we get 70 seconds a station, and each station has 2 questions/pins/tags/etc. 22 stations total, with one of those being a rest station and one station being a bonus question.

 

[battie]

We are now, but I think that’s a new thing.
I think she's saying if it’s not dissected well enough you won’t be able to figure out where things are and what this structure

They've always been graded, 5% of the total grade when I took it.

 

[SkiOtter]

They've always been graded, 5% of the total grade when I took it.

I thought you said something about the new professor changing it and adding them last year?

 

[MixedAnimals77]

We aren't graded on dissection. We also do free float for the exam. So SA was divided into 2 groups each had 2 hours to complete the exam. 1 hr in lab and 1 hr for written portion. LA is an hour lab portion only in 3 sections free float

 

[battie]

I thought you said something about the new professor changing it and adding them last year?

ahhhh. I see the confusion. No, she tried to pulling some sketchy shenanigans that back fired.

 

[battie]

But it is also important to understand how structures relate to one another and I feel like allowing students to touch helps with that

I can see how it can help, but I don't see how it's absolutely necessary. Like, how we move the structures in lab isn't how they would move in real life, so it's not really indicative of what we'll experience in the real world. And they are still related. You see the structures around the pin and how the specimen is orientated.

 

[cdo96]

We also don’t get to touch- there was too many instances of people touching, the pin/ tag falling off, the student panicks and tries to replace it, replaces it in the wrong position. And so now, everyone behind them gets the question wrong because they can’t fix it and they can’t give you the credit because there’s no way to tell where exactly you were/ if you actually knew it or not

 

[battie]

it's like talking to a brick wall
Bye y'all

Some how I totally missed this. If it's any consolation, that's how it feels on this end too.

I think it's gotta be that our specimens are more dissected out, or that yours are isolated from other structures so you don't have any visual perspective.

 

[WildZoo]

We were allowed to touch and as far as I know never had any issues with people moving pins or anything (we were told...not to move them...lol). Smaller class size though, only 40 or so of us in the lab at a time.

For more mobile structures a string attached to a card was used kind of like what zig described earlier.

I didn't personally have to do a ton of touching and things, although there was one infamous question where half my class thought a lung was a spleen...pretty sure everyone who touched that one got it right

 

[battie]

one infamous question where half my class thought a lung was a spleen...pretty sure everyone who touched that one got it right

Like, I don't want to be judgey. But..... what? Lol. What is this story?

 

[WildZoo]

Like, I don't want to be judgey. But..... what? Lol. What is this story?

It was a horse lung (I think) and it was dark because idk, postmortem changes or whatever. The way it was positioned it did kind of look like a spleen. But if you touched it or flipped it over (at which point you could see the bronchi)...definitely lung.

I think people were just really tired

 

[battie]

postmortem changes or whatever

Interesting. Our calves and ponies don't have any visible postmortem changes cause they're prepped within a day of eurhanasia. So in that context, that makes way more sense. Massive horse spleen and discolored lung would be harder on someone who is overstressed and not thinking levely.

 

[cdo96]

If anyone has any tips for studying parasitology without crying, lmk.

sorry for the late response, it won’t help for this exam, but it can help going forward. For parasitology I looooove using quizlet. I made a bunch. So I made a lot of individual cards with everything I needed to know and just constantly repeated those. I ended up doing really well, overall.

For instance, all of the following are separate quizlet flashcards

• Toxocara canis (name): Canine Large Roundworm
• Toxocara canis (DH): Dogs
• Toxocara canis (Site of infection): small intestine
  
• Toxocara canis (Life cycle): 4 methods- transplacentally (tracheal migration), transmammary, ingestion of L3s, ingestion of paratenic host (mouse)
  
• Toxocara canis (PPP): 3-4 weeks unless it’s a puppy transplacentally infected, then it’s 2-3 days
  
• Toxocara canis (morphological features): [I don’t remember and too lazy too look it up, something about a lanceolate cervical alae]
• Toxocara canis (Drugs): Pyrantel pamoate, fenbendazole for 3 days, febantel, macrocyclic lactones)

It’s a hard course, don’t get me wrong. But preparing it this way got me a super high B (we don’t do pluses) in parasit 1 and an A in parasit 2

 

[WildZoo]

Interesting. Our calves and ponies don't have any visible postmortem changes cause they're prepped within a day of eurhanasia. So in that context, that makes way more sense. Massive horse spleen and discolored lung would be harder on someone who is overstressed and not thinking levely.

As far as I know all ours are prepped the same day as well, so idk what was going on there.

 

[battie]

As far as I know all ours are prepped the same day as well, so idk what was going on there.

As always, a pony doing whatever it wants, even in death.

 

[TheGirlWithTheFernTattoo]

We were allowed to touch and as far as I know never had any issues with people moving pins or anything (we were told...not to move them...lol). Smaller class size though, only 40 or so of us in the lab at a time.

For more mobile structures a string attached to a card was used kind of like what zig described earlier.

I didn't personally have to do a ton of touching and things, although there was one infamous question where half my class thought a lung was a spleen...pretty sure everyone who touched that one got it right

On our second anatomy midterm I definitely identified a fresh tissue liver as a fresh lung lol.

 

[PetVet7]

sorry for the late response, it won’t help for this exam, but it can help going forward. For parasitology I looooove using quizlet. I made a bunch. So I made a lot of individual cards with everything I needed to know and just constantly repeated those. I ended up doing really well, overall.

For instance, all of the following are separate quizlet flashcards

• Toxocara canis (name): Canine Large Roundworm
• Toxocara canis (DH): Dogs
• Toxocara canis (Site of infection): small intestine
  
• Toxocara canis (Life cycle): 4 methods- transplacentally (tracheal migration), transmammary, ingestion of L3s, ingestion of paratenic host (mouse)
  
• Toxocara canis (PPP): 3-4 weeks unless it’s a puppy transplacentally infected, then it’s 2-3 days
  
• Toxocara canis (morphological features): [I don’t remember and too lazy too look it up, something about a lanceolate cervical alae]
• Toxocara canis (Drugs): Pyrantel pamoate, fenbendazole for 3 days, febantel, macrocyclic lactones)

It’s a hard course, don’t get me wrong. But preparing it this way got me a super high B (we don’t do pluses) in parasit 1 and an A in parasit 2

Our professor is super against using flash cards because she wants us to relate similar parasites and know the differences. I made charts, but obviously it didn’t help.

 

[battie]

Our professor is super against using flash cards

Most profs are against me skipping class. But you gotta do what you gotta do to pass.

 

[PetVet7]

We’re not allowed to touch our anatomy specimens, and I’ve never really felt the need to. We have to learn to orientate without touching. They use our own dissection and make sure to pin in a clear spot. If there’s ever an unclear pin, the question is usually thrown out.

 

[PetVet7]

Most profs are against me skipping class. But you gotta do what you gotta do to pass.

That’s what panopto is for lol

 

[Caiter92]

Our professor is super against using flash cards because she wants us to relate similar parasites and know the differences. I made charts, but obviously it didn’t help.

I agree that's important, but you can still do that in whatever way helps you learn them best. I made note cards, and then once I had things down would start being like "and this makes X different than Y because of this part of the life cycle/infectious stage," etc. Make note cards if they'll help you learn better

 

[johnsmith123]

I can't imagine doing anatomy tests without being able to move stuff. Our professors are great at tagging the super deep structures that you wouldn't be able to see without probing around. It's a double edged sword because on one hand, you can dig around to make 100% sure that you know what you're looking at. On the other hand, one of our professors has been teaching both human and animal anatomy for 40 years and expects us to know even the most minor branches of arteries/nerves so tests often reflect that desire.

 

[Barkley13]

But you can still tag deep structures and not let students touch it during a test. It just has to be on a specimen that has it more dissected out or they have the more superficial structures reflected.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

I can't imagine doing anatomy tests without being able to move stuff. Our professors are great at tagging the super deep structures that you wouldn't be able to see without probing around. It's a double edged sword because on one hand, you can dig around to make 100% sure that you know what you're looking at. On the other hand, one of our professors has been teaching both human and animal anatomy for 40 years and expects us to know even the most minor branches of arteries/nerves so tests often reflect that desire.

Wait what who?! Dr. M or N?

 

[johnsmith123]

Wait what who?! Dr. M or N?

Go look at Dr. M's resume on the school's website if you want an all day read. He has more distinctions and experience than anyone I have ever met lol.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

I didn't mean to start WW3 in here. It looks like no one is going to change anyone's mind. We get more time for practicals, similar to what @MixedAnimals77 said and we are allowed to free float. My gross anatomy grade would be significantly lower if tests were run a different way. I am extremely grateful I am allowed to touch/move things around!! I guess I dunno why you would have a practical instead of just having people look at pictures of cadavers or something if you can't move it.

Go look at Dr. M's resume on the school's website if you want an all day read. He has more distinctions and experience than anyone I have ever met lol.

I figured since he is definitely his superior age wise lol. That guy is awesome, anytime I ask him a question he will answer on like a 5 min rant lol. Usually their online bios aren't super UTD but I will def check his out.

 

[cdo96]

Our professor is super against using flash cards because she wants us to relate similar parasites and know the differences. I made charts, but obviously it didn’t help.

Let me see if I can find any charts that someone made that might help, in that case.

 

[cdo96]

Our professor is super against using flash cards because she wants us to relate similar parasites and know the differences. I made charts, but obviously it didn’t help.

That being said, I understand her point, but there’s also distinct enough differences that it’s helpful to have the cards. For instances, I like knowing that the ascarids have a relatively short pre patent period. That being said, Toxocara canis is 2-3 weeks, whereas T. cati is 2 months, Toxascaris leonina is 2-2.5 months. Baylisascaris procyonis is 2-4 weeks. Ascaris suum 6-8 weeks. Parascaris equorim is like 10 weeks.

These are all ascarids and they have relatively short PPP’s, but if I didn’t have my flash cards, I wouldn’t be able to keep them separate.

I understand that professors want us to relate things, but I also want an A in the course soo.......

 

[battie]

Our professors are great at tagging the super deep structures that you wouldn't be able to see without probing around

We dissect everything out down to bones basically. In talking with @SkiOtter and @MixedAnimals77 I couldn't really come up with a question that our anatomy team couldn't have pinned (or pinned an adjacent structure and write a question to get to a different structure).

I guess I dunno why you would have a practical instead of just having people look at pictures of cadavers or something if you can't move it.

Because pictures are static and can be of terrible quality. You see it pinned in real life, you can move yourself around it to get a different perspective, or be as close as you want. You also get the context of the pin by having the whole specimen. Can't do that with a picture.

The way I see it is, on both practical types, students still have the option of not touching the specimen, either by choice or by virtue of the exam, and still be able to identify the structure. Therefore, both systems work.

 

[Caiter92]

We dissect everything out down to bones basically. In talking with @SkiOtter and @MixedAnimals77 I couldn't really come up with a question that our anatomy team couldn't have pinned (or pinned an adjacent structure and write a question to get to a different structure).



Because pictures are static and can be of terrible quality. You see it pinned in real life, you can move yourself around it to get a different perspective, or be as close as you want. You also get the context of the pin by having the whole specimen. Can't do that with a picture.

The way I see it is, on both practical types, students still have the option of not touching the specimen, either by choice or by virtue of the exam, and still be able to identify the structure. Therefore, both systems work.

I don’t think anyone was arguing you don’t learn the material with one system.

But in first year for me, there were multiple times where a tendon was tagged that looked more superficial than it actually was once you traced where it was going to. They did that on purpose because they actively encouraged people to check answers based on what something connected to. We also only had 15 cadavers, so often there were multiple structures tagged on a limb and you truly did have to touch and roll the limb to be able to answer another question. We also didn’t remove muscles typically, just reflected back, so you also often had to reflect back more superficial muscles to get to the structure that was tagged. If they had pinned back more superficial structures to expose what was tagged, or we had more cadavers? Sure you wouldn’t have needed to touch things for most of that. But how exams were set up, you did need to touch specimens for many, many questions.

Also, cadavers often don’t read the text book, and vessels and nerves can branch differently than expected. They loved tagging those to see if you knew it still had to be X because it supplied Y, even if it didn’t branch where expected. That tripped a lot of people up on our second SA anatomy exam that was mostly vessels and nerves.

You can definitely set up an anatomy exam that doesn’t allow touching and sufficiently test the material, but not allowing touching doesn’t somehow make students have to know the material better and I don’t really get why it was being argued it does last night. It’s just a difference in how the structures are tagged.

Oregon State didn’t split from WSU that long ago, and I imagine they still test anatomy pretty similarly to how we do, so they probably have a similar testing system.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

I don’t think anyone was arguing you don’t learn the material with one system.

But in first year for me, there were multiple times where a tendon was tagged that looked more superficial than it actually was once you traced where it was going to. They did that on purpose because they actively encouraged people to check answers based on what something connected to. We also only had 15 cadavers, so often there were multiple structures tagged on a limb and you truly did have to touch and roll the limb to be able to answer another question. We also didn’t remove muscles typically, just reflected back, so you also often had to reflect back more superficial muscles to get to the structure that was tagged. If they had pinned back more superficial structures to expose what was tagged, or we had more cadavers? Sure you wouldn’t have needed to touch things for most of that. But how exams were set up, you did need to touch specimens for many, many questions.

Also, cadavers often don’t read the text book, and vessels and nerves can branch differently than expected. They loved tagging those to see if you knew it still had to be X because it supplied Y, even if it didn’t branch where expected. That tripped a lot of people up on our second SA anatomy exam that was mostly vessels and nerves.

You can definitely set up an anatomy exam that doesn’t allow touching and sufficiently test the material, but not allowing touching doesn’t somehow make students have to know the material better and I don’t really get why it was being argued it does last night. It’s just a difference in how the structures are tagged.

Oregon State didn’t split from WSU that long ago, and I imagine they still test anatomy pretty similarly to how we do, so they probably have a similar testing system.

Agree with 100% of this

 

[battie]

You can definitely set up an anatomy exam that doesn’t allow touching and sufficiently test the material, but not allowing touching doesn’t somehow make students have to know the material better and I don’t really get why it was being argued it does last night. It’s just a difference in how the structures are tagged.

For the first bolded, that wasn't what I was arguing at all, and it's my bad if that's how it came across. To me, it seemed that the ziggy was making the argument that our testing was inferior and (in her words) inherently unfair to hers. My argument, which I've said several times, is that they areally basically equal (the second bolded statement).

I never said that we (those who don't touch) need to study more/harder or that we need to know more. I didn't think I inferred that.

 

[Caiter92]

For the first bolded, that wasn't what I was arguing at all, and it's my bad if that's how it came across. To me, it seemed that the ziggy was making the argument that our testing was inferior and (in her words) inherently unfair to hers. My argument, which I've said several times, is that they areally basically equal (the second bolded statement).

I never said that we (those who don't touch) need to study more/harder or that we need to know more. I didn't think I inferred that.

It seemed to get really misconstrued last night what Ziggy was saying. I read back through things after seeing your post, because I missed that discussion last night, and it seemed to me Ziggy thought it was unfair you guys weren’t allowed to touch things, and that it made it harder for you. I don’t really see how she was insulting your testing?

Things seemed to get taken way to personally and I think it was just people not understanding what the others were saying.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

For the first bolded, that wasn't what I was arguing at all, and it's my bad if that's how it came across. To me, it seemed that the ziggy was making the argument that our testing was inferior and (in her words) inherently unfair to hers. My argument, which I've said several times, is that they areally basically equal (the second bolded statement).

I never said that we (those who don't touch) need to study more/harder or that we need to know more. I didn't think I inferred that.

You, and others, have implied a number of different things that aren't accurate and that I don't agree with.

People have implied:
- we must not know our stuff going into exams if we can't already tell how they relate without touching
- we must not do as good of dissections if we need to touch to figure it out
- that we lack some sort of skill at being able to determine a structure without touching
- that your exams must be harder
- that we will mess things up for our other classmates (in the 4 gross anatomy exams I have had, this has never happened)
etc etc

I kind of think that at this point, the convo isn't going anywhere. It seems we are happy with our system, and y'all are happy with yours (but I would be very upset about failing gross :/)