How did you study Anatomy? Feeling overwhelmed

[TelemarketingEnigma]

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That's an interesting approach. I think I realized, after putting in 14 hours + a day for 2 weeks that the problem is that I was not "compartmentalizing" the information. So I'd have a list of muscles for a section and would write them out, their innervation, blood supply, and action. Rather than looking at the muscles as their own compartment (both anatomically and for convenience of learning) and recognizing all muscles in this group are innervated by X with these exceptions. Then building on top of that: well actually while that is true, the X nerve actually divides here and these muscles in that compartment are innervated by A branch and these are by B branch. Same concept with the blood supply and building an idea of the structural arrangement like that.

Rather, I was just going off the list of terms we had to learn, not really connecting the dots. It was like putting together a 1000 piece puzzle without a picture to reference.

Maybe it's just the way my anatomy course was taught (I was an actual lecture goer, not an anki person), but things were definitely presented to us as compartments, which helped me cluster things. For example the dreaded forearm - it has a superficial, intermediate, and deep compartments. If you're dissecting the forearm, you tend to see everything in that order. And that was important for our practical exams, because for example sometimes there would be a muscle tagged in the deep compartment with the superficial+intermediate compartments completely removed - you needed to be able to recognize what compartment you were in by the group of muscles/landmarks you could see. We also had exam questions that asked directly about what you might find in various compartments (or triangles of the neck, etc). Or you could cluster things other ways: start from one specific point (ie acromion, or coracoid process, or whatever) and name everything that originates/inserts there, and then work outwards. We definitely got tested on groupings like that, but even if you're not tested on it I found that grouping things really helped me understand the bigger picture.

I did refer to the long lists of terms, but often as almost a scavenger hunt to review once I'd learned everything another way. start from the top of the list and either find it on a donor (if you have free access to your lab) or a digital model or a picture, and name all the relevant details (innervations, origins, etc). That was pretty common among my classmates as well - we had free access to the lab to study, so people would take turns naming things to find and explain

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

For example the dreaded forearm - it has a superficial, intermediate, and deep compartments. If you're dissecting the forearm, you tend to see everything in that order. And that was important for our practical exams, because for example sometimes there would be a muscle tagged in the deep compartment with the superficial+intermediate compartments completely removed - you needed to be able to recognize what compartment you were in by the group of muscles/landmarks you could see.

Ours was done the same way.

 

[idkmed]

Thank you all for your encouragement. I ended up passing both my first practical and written exam. Big relief.

 

[mwsapphire]

Thank you all for your encouragement. I ended up passing both my first practical and written exam. Big relief.

Praying that I passed my exam, too ( we don't have practicals for this semester since we dont have extra time in lab).

 

[mwsapphire]

Praying that I passed my exam, too ( we don't have practicals for this semester since we dont have extra time in lab).

Update:
I failed my exam. I can still pass the class but feels bad man.

 

[Medical_studies]

You'll definitely pass the class but you have to start brs and umich questions no later than the fourth day of this block (Saturday) and if you have lab read the Rohan book before the lab session or online lab session. This means that tonight is very important to try to get through videos on the subject. Maybe lecturio they would be the most comprehensive. And i know its a lot to ask, but you will have to eventually try to watch the videos faster than 1x speed. If your blocks are divided by parts of the body similar to most textbooks, it is impossible to fail if you do enough questions, unless you read the class slides. In anatomy there just aren't too many things they can ask you. Starting the questions by Saturday is extremely important, meaning you have to finish all the videos on the block material by Sat morning and stream the next 3 days of class lecture.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Update:
I failed my exam. I can still pass the class but feels bad man.

Then you need to change what you’re doing. Don’t fall into the sunk cost fallacy that you need to keep doing what you’re doing because you’re in too deep.

 

[mwsapphire]

You'll definitely pass the class but you have to start brs and umich questions no later than the fourth day of this block (Saturday) and if you have lab read the Rohan book before the lab session or online lab session. This means that tonight is very important to try to get through videos on the subject. Maybe lecturio they would be the most comprehensive. And i know its a lot to ask, but you will have to eventually try to watch the videos faster than 1x speed. If your blocks are divided by parts of the body similar to most textbooks, it is impossible to fail if you do enough questions, unless you read the class slides. In anatomy there just aren't too many things they can ask you. Starting the questions by Saturday is extremely important, meaning you have to finish all the videos on the block material by Sat morning and stream the next 3 days of class lecture.

Wait wait wait ohmygosh
I don't have lab until friday! We have this virtual lab activity tmrw morning and I am preparing for that. I am using the Atlas ( I have Grant's and I like it so I'm sticking to that) before lab and using it to take notes. I honestly have been doing my school's own lectures and for now I'll stick to those until I can figure more things out about how to use third party resources I feel like right now I don't know enough. And how do you know what day of the block it is? I think we go to different schools we have an integrated curriculum.

I got through 1/3 anatomy lectures in my school's module for this week, just two more before Friday's lab, online dissection video, then the zoom meeting lab activity, Going through everything in Grant's atlas. That's all before lab. Questions I'll get to later.

 

[Medical_studies]

edit: Sorry! I mixed you and another poster in the thread up with the OP. I thought it was all the same person. Thats why I was stuck on the questions and was babbling on and on, my mistake!!

 

[mwsapphire]

edit: Sorry! I mixed you and another poster in the thread up with the OP. I thought it was all the same person. Thats why I was stuck on the questions and was babbling on and on, my mistake!!

I had a feeling you were mistaking me for OP! No problem 🙂