Does anyone else passionately hate/hated Gross Anatomy?

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Planes2Doc

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Does anyone else think that Gross Anatomy is/was the bane of their existence? I think the class is absolutely horrendous, and is definitely overkill since it is taught from an anatomist perspective. I get strange responses from people when I tell them I don't like the class, kind of like in the pre-allo boards if you tell someone you didn't enjoy volunteering.

What did you think of Gross Anatomy? And for older students, how does it compare to stuff you've taken later on?
 
I don't mind learning about it, and I think prosections are useful, but I'm not a fan of doing the actual dissection - takes up valuable time, and we often don't find what we need to because we aren't that great at dissecting.
 
Planes2Doc said:
Does anyone else think that Gross Anatomy is/was the bane of their existence? I think the class is absolutely horrendous, and is definitely overkill since it is taught from an anatomist perspective. I get strange responses from people when I tell them I don't like the class, kind of like in the pre-allo boards if you tell someone you didn't enjoy volunteering.

What did you think of Gross Anatomy? And for older students, how does it compare to stuff you've taken later on?
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I learned a lot more by looking at prosections and reading my netter's than I did dissecting in lab. It wasn't even worth going (too bad it was mandatory).

Word to the wise. The Pre-anything boards are going to be full of people who have no idea what they're talking about. Many schools have poorly taught classes, and a lot of the subject material is pretty dry and uninteresting for a lot of people. I wasn't the biggest fan of anatomy either. It just took time away from learning more interesting things.
 
The faculty was great. The class was not so much fun. I didn't have the best cadaver in the world though and spent a lot of time searching for things that I never found so I think that played into it.

Physiology is much better and brings all the structures you saw in lab to life.
 
I have an undying hatred towards Anatomy. Although part of the reason could be because of the way it is taught. At my school all of our lectures are composed of images so we have to write down everything the professors say, a 2 hour lecture easily ends up becoming 5+ hours just to write down all the notes not to mention the time it takes to actually study it.
 
I feel like I might be the oddball on this thread cause I thought it was awesome. I had great dissection partners though. Now I'm taking cell and molc, genetics, and biochem....now those are the bane of my existence. Dry and dense like communion wafers
 
Planes2Doc said:
Does anyone else think that Gross Anatomy is/was the bane of their existence? I think the class is absolutely horrendous, and is definitely overkill since it is taught from an anatomist perspective. I get strange responses from people when I tell them I don't like the class, kind of like in the pre-allo boards if you tell someone you didn't enjoy volunteering.

What did you think of Gross Anatomy? And for older students, how does it compare to stuff you've taken later on?
Click to expand...

29037801.jpg
 
You guys need to stop sippin' on the haterade. Anatomy rocked my socks off.
 
As a resident (neurosurgery) I absolutely love being able to get back in the lab and do dissections. Having a better understanding of anatomy translates directly to clinical ability. Likewise, practicing on a cadaver allows one to push the envelope of his technique and make mistakes in an environment that won't harm anyone.
 
neusu said:
As a resident (neurosurgery) I absolutely love being able to get back in the lab and do dissections. Having a better understanding of anatomy translates directly to clinical ability. Likewise, practicing on a cadaver allows one to push the envelope of his technique and make mistakes in an environment that won't harm anyone.
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I agree. I didn't really dislike anatomy as an MS1, but I didn't really care for it either. As a surgery resident, I wish I could do those dissections again on a cadaver. I would learn a lot.
 
neusu said:
As a resident (neurosurgery) I absolutely love being able to get back in the lab and do dissections. Having a better understanding of anatomy translates directly to clinical ability. Likewise, practicing on a cadaver allows one to push the envelope of his technique and make mistakes in an environment that won't harm anyone.
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My favorite lab was opening the skull to dissect the brain with a saw/chisel and hammer. There was a hole in the dura mater while I was trying to peel it away from the calvarium. Instead I gave my cadaver a frontal lobotomy 🙁
 
Cadaver lab was sometimes fun, but I wept with joy when I passed the last exam and could move on. Stuffing that much information in my brain, no matter how interesting it otherwise would have been, totally killed me.
 
I;m out of medical school 16 years and I still have nightmares about it. For me it was the worst course in medical school.
 
I found that studying the material for the next day and watching dissection videos ahead of time make the dissections much more productive and enjoyable. When you are in there you have a much better idea of what you are doing. It also helps that I have two people in my group that want to do radiology and do the same thing I do.
 
I hated anatomy, and I remember thinking at the time not "I hate anatomy" but rather "I hate med school" because I didn't know the difference. If all of medical school was as miserable for me as anatomy was I would have dropped out long ago.

That being said, it's kind of hard to separate the experience of anatomy lab from the beginning of medical school, which imo sucks by its very nature. You're trying to make friends, find your niche in your class, and figure out how to study at a whole new level all at the same time.
 
Lectures are hit or miss so far and lab is just a pain in the ass. I don't hate it yet, but going to lab is definitely becoming a chore, even with pretty chill tank mates.

My biggest gripe is knowing the material cold and then getting tested on absolutely tiny minutia.
 
I didn't like anatomy. But it's a rite of passage, so just get through it. Things get better. 👍
 
Its not the best class, but try to learn as much as possible. In third year, the surgery attendings will pimp on structures and often will bring out the, "When did you have anatomy?" card if you don't know...
 
tco said:
Its not the best class, but try to learn as much as possible. In third year, the surgery attendings will pimp on structures and often will bring out the, "When did you have anatomy?" card if you don't know...
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Anatomy is the first course we take and is far and away the lowest subject score on step 1 - do we have an excuse? 😛
 
tco said:
Its not the best class, but try to learn as much as possible. In third year, the surgery attendings will pimp on structures and often will bring out the, "When did you have anatomy?" card if you don't know...
Click to expand...

make sure you know where the white rami communicans is. super high yield
 
I loathe anatomy. I didn't mind the actual dissections, and actually felt like I learned stuff during them. I hated learned from my classmates during team teaching sessions. I just barely failed my first set of anatomy exams as well. Though, that could be my fault for not going in independently and going over structures.


....there's M1 forgiveness, right?
 
Love anatomy. It makes sense to me, and very easy to see the clinical relevance. I wasn't a fan of a dissecting, especially the face and head. Mainly because I'm very impatient and hate having to find little things that take forever to dissect out. Also the smell of lab is disgusting and hard to get rid of... But I definitely learned a lot, and wouldn't have it any other way. Some things you just have to go through it medical school.
 
I hated it more than anything! It was absolutely horrible. I'm 1/2 way through second year and nothing has even come close to being so terrible. There has been some anatomy in other courses, but it was actually relevant and not that bad to relearn.
 
Cinclus said:
I don't mind learning about it, and I think prosections are useful, but I'm not a fan of doing the actual dissection - takes up valuable time, and we often don't find what we need to because we aren't that great at dissecting.
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This is mostly where I stand. I resented wasting so much time digging through fat an connective tissue, clueless as to what I was looking for, when we had several people around who could dissect expertly and show us the structures we needed to see in a fraction of the time. It didn't help that most of the information was completely useless to me. With the possible exception of microanatomy, anatomy was the lowest yield med school class for me.
 
MilkmanAl said:
This is mostly where I stand. I resented wasting so much time digging through fat an connective tissue, clueless as to what I was looking for, when we had several people around who could dissect expertly and show us the structures we needed to see in a fraction of the time. It didn't help that most of the information was completely useless to me. With the possible exception of microanatomy, anatomy was the lowest yield med school class for me.
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+1. Hours of lab time searching for crap for which I had no clue made first year exhausting and LONG. Funny thing is I also enjoyed Histology. Maybe I should follow in your footsteps and go into anesthesia?
 
FIREitUP said:
+1. Hours of lab time searching for crap for which I had no clue made first year exhausting and LONG. Funny thing is I also enjoyed Histology. Maybe I should follow in your footsteps and go into anesthesia?
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I like histology because of the pretty colors and shapes.

(sent from my phone)
 
MilkmanAl said:
This is mostly where I stand. I resented wasting so much time digging through fat an connective tissue, clueless as to what I was looking for, when we had several people around who could dissect expertly and show us the structures we needed to see in a fraction of the time. It didn't help that most of the information was completely useless to me. With the possible exception of microanatomy, anatomy was the lowest yield med school class for me.
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I agree with this completely. It's so hard to go through things and make sure that you aren't destroying anything important when you're identifying and cleaning up structures while your lab partners are practically on top of you.
 
yehhhboiii said:
I agree with this completely. It's so hard to go through things and make sure that you aren't destroying anything important when you're identifying and cleaning up structures while your lab partners are practically on top of you.
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And of course there is also the joy of finding a blood vessel, carefully cleaning up around it, trying not to damage it or tear any of its attachments, only to have a lab instructor come over after 30 minutes or so and say "that's just a vein, get rid of it so you can see the important stuff underneath." 😡
 
I agree with the general sentiment that learning anatomy is cool, but the dissecting itself sucks. Seeing the actual structures at the end of a dissection (which definitely doesn't always happen) is neat. But the ~3hrs of digging through fat and connective tissue to get to that point isn't. Plus, the smell... That horrible smell that stays with you. My last dissection is tomorrow and it will not be a sad day.
 
I was terrible at anatomy and feel like I retained none of the little bit I did learn at the time, but I have to say I actually really liked anatomy lab (aside from bombing the practicals 😡). Anatomy lab seemed like one of those cool life experiences that not many people get to experience/see. Im not trying to get into any ultra-competitive specialties, so I wasn't killing myself trying to get honors and it just seemed like a generally cool experience.
 
I hated it with a fiery passion. It may have been the amount worthless memorization or the worthless number of hours scraping fat and connective tissue to get to some little nerve that would have taken me 1 min to google and get ~19 million pics. Funny thing is I really enjoy MSK and nerves I just hated that learning format. Rite of passage is the only way for me to describe that class because time sink turd ship makes me sound bitter.
 
I enjoyed it as much as I could but anatomy has been the hardest class in med school so far for me. No other class is really like it though, so don't let it get you down.
 
If you are searching around blind in a cadaver you are doing it wrong. Study before dissection and then use the dissections for review. Dissection goes faster and then you only have to go through it one more time right before the test. Easy A.
 
FutureInternist said:
Weed out class
Just like Organic in uncergrad
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How many med students do you know that failed anatomy and were then subsequently booted from med school? Your statement makes no sense (and I'm not sure what an "uncergrad" is). 🙄

SirGecko said:
If you are searching around blind in a cadaver you are doing it wrong. Study before dissection and then use the dissections for review. Dissection goes faster and then you only have to go through it one more time right before the test. Easy A.
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This. Dunno why you wouldn't at least look at the dissector ahead of time and figure out what it is you're supposed to be looking for.
 
I hated this class to the point that i was doing horrible. i woke one day and i realized this **** is not going anywhere and i better changed my attitude. I did and I made it through. In my experience there more I hated it the worse I did. Even if you cant love just learn to tolerate and make it through is my advice to anyone strugling
 
Zedor said:
What do you mean? Are you suggesting anatomy is one of the main reasons students fail to continue past first year?
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I think most if not all material in medicine is fairly simple... There is just SOOOOO much of it. And Anatomy is the epitome of that.
Way too much info with way too little Qs on USMLE --> way too low yield but still a big part of school exams, leading to low GPAs
Add that to the fact that it is usually taught in the first semester when most people don't know HOW to study.
 
I'm 50/50 on the fence about anatomy. I don't mind it AS A WHOLE but I absolutely loathe lab time. 3 hours twice a week standing around with your group-mates carefully cleaning structures and removing fascia. Today I spent about 45 min cleaning up the brachial plexus and our anatomy teacher comes over and does the same amount of work I did plus more with expert precision in 2 min. Why can't they do that all the time?

I rock the written anatomy tests but the practicals kill me. Half the time I'm playing a guessing game as to which structure they actually want me to write down since they are the kings at ambiguously tagging structures. This plus the fact that anatomy is my weakest subject by FAR and I'm no slouch in the grade department.
 
FutureInternist said:
I think most if not all material in medicine is fairly simple... There is just SOOOOO much of it. And Anatomy is the epitome of that.
Way too much info with way too little Qs on USMLE --> way too low yield but still a big part of school exams, leading to low GPAs
Add that to the fact that it is usually taught in the first semester when most people don't know HOW to study.
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Well said! It is taught in waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too much detail. We're trying to become physicians, not anatomists. 😡
 
Anatomy lecture was fun, and I learned a lot. I hated anatomy lab/the lab practical. Two of my tankmates didn't dissect at all, and it was seriously me and another dude working on one cadaver. I didn't really have time to go in and look at structures, so.. didn't do so hot. I LOVED dissecting and cleaning up structures though. I found it really therapeutic/relaxing, especially when I got pretty damn good (since I had so much practice the whole 8 weeks -_____-).
 
SirGecko said:
If you are searching around blind in a cadaver you are doing it wrong. Study before dissection and then use the dissections for review. Dissection goes faster and then you only have to go through it one more time right before the test. Easy A.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a colossal waste of time. That time is better spent actually studying and practicals come down to "spend the weekend in the laboratory going over all the structures." Actually dissecting won't really help you for the practical.

I pretty much just shoot the **** with the two other tank mates while the one dude who is gung-ho does all the work.
 
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