Week 17: The End or Just the Beginning?

For the amount of time and effort anatomy has asked of us thus far, it has continued to be unrelenting through to the end. We got barraged with the lower limb Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week and mind you - that essentially makes up half the body - and were tested immediately on both Thursday with the National Board of Medical Examiners anatomy shelf exam, and then again on Friday with our written test and practical test that spanned another four hours. Without recalling all the traumatic experiences and stress of this week and stirring up my newly acquired post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), I survived. In hindsight the practical identification of the tagged cadavers came out a like better than we expected. Yes I have survived gross anatomy, but what have I accomplished? 1066 pages of textbook reading in short term memory, check. Virtually nil comprehension of the lower limb, check. Massive apprehension to having to learn any of these systems in greater depth and detail, check. But that was it, after Friday at 12:00 pm my brain decompressed and it's been recovering ever since. The mercy that Mayo's curriculum affords is the two week selective, the three week non-didactic leadership block, followed by another two week selective before our next basic science six weeks starts in January. Anatomy the block is over, but the long term learning is just beginning… well, beginning after I enjoy these seven weeks of neural vacation.