Failed Anatomy

[da8s0859q]

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Dunno why everyone's giving Tired **** for saying what he did. He has a point.

In any case, like many others here, I also second the "don't give up, do what you have to do" mentality. If nothing else, you might learn something great out of it (method of studying, mindset, whatever) that you can use to apply to the rest of medical school.

Personally, I think making your own study materials is a huge help. The last MD I shadowed (sorry, I'm not a med student yet) mentioned to me how that was his thing through schooling - he'd rewrite notes, presumably redo drawings/charts/what have you, so forth. Using the cranial nerve example, I can at least speak from experience that it's far more beneficial to me to go through it and chart it out, including mnemonics about big boobs and vaginas to determine innervation type and name, as opposed to reading a list in a book. "Oh, that's what the vagus does. Cool." versus "The vagus, X, sensory/motor, does [...]."

$.02. Good luck to you 👍

 

[smq123]

Dunno why everyone's giving Tired **** for saying what he did. He has a point.

Tired has a point, but, seeing that the OP was already beating herself up over failing anatomy, he came across as being unnecessarily discouraging and pessimistic. Failing anatomy doesn't mean that you'll be a bad doctor, or that you aren't cut out for med school (although that's what some people felt that his comments were suggesting). He's right, in the sense that if the OP would like to do ophtho, derm, ortho, or rads, she's probably screwed. But if she wants to do Medicine, FP, peds, psych, then it won't be a problem as long as she does well in her other courses and Step 1.

Personally, I think making your own study materials is a huge help. The last MD I shadowed (sorry, I'm not a med student yet) mentioned to me how that was his thing through schooling - he'd rewrite notes, presumably redo drawings/charts/what have you, so forth. Using the cranial nerve example, I can at least speak from experience that it's far more beneficial to me to go through it and chart it out, including mnemonics about big boobs and vaginas to determine innervation type and name, as opposed to reading a list in a book. "Oh, that's what the vagus does. Cool." versus "The vagus, X, sensory/motor, does [...]."

Since you're not in med school yet - yes, making your own study materials is very helpful. It can also be very time consuming. And, God forbid, if you focus on the wrong or inconsequential stuff when making your own study materials...ooph. Just go ahead and stick an "F" on your forehead.

For future reference (when you start school), in the case of anatomy, making your own study materials pretty much only helps on the written part, which is the part that almost everyone ends up passes. The practicals are what really trip people up. It sounds like the OP just couldn't adjust to taking anatomy practicals. At my school, they kept telling us "Use easily identifiable landmarks to orient yourself when looking at the body during the practical," but since I couldn't even identify the landmarks, I was in deep, deep $#!^.

 

[vtucci]

Agreed.

When the heart (or fill-in the blank organ, vessel etc) is turned upside down and twisted in unnatural configurations, the normal landmarks go out the door. We often had the body covered completed except for a tiny exposed area. It was often hard to tell if the body was prone or supine.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

The practical aspect of anatomy was much, much harder for me than the written, but I knew lots of people who had the exact opposite experience. Some people are just better at orienting themselves and visualizing things -- I'm not one of those people. I was lucky in that at my school the written was worth more than the practical part, so you could still do well without really getting the practical stuff down. It sounds like the op wasn't so lucky.