My class had a get together! In the photo below you can see most of my lovely peers. Notably absent from this photo is myself. Where was I? Suffering. Two nights before the shin-dig I had a sore throat and headache. Somehow that turned into a fever of 103 degrees. Not a great way to kick off PA school. I took a day off from class because spreading respiratory viruses isn't cute and missed out on the fun. :/
Outside of my mystery illness this was a fun month. In Histology we got to practice embedding and cutting tissue. It gave me a whole lot of respect for histo techs. You would think sticking something in paraffin wax and cutting off a slice would be easy but its so not. Embedding is fun and I could do that all day but making the slide? Nightmare. You have to somehow get this 5 micrometer thick piece of waxy tissue that's floating around in water onto the slide in the exact same orientation as it was submitted. Becky (the instructor) kindly gave us a lot of leeway with that since we aren't histo techs. It was a fun lab but I'm glad I chose PA school and not histo tech school. You can skip to the last minute of this video to see what I mean about getting things on the slide. They made it look easy but don't be fooled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml4fBEmH8Sg&ab_channel=PeterFuerst
I don't know if I would call this a fun part of the month but it was at least new. We had our first anatomy exam which consisted of both a written and practical component in the same day. The consensus among the group is that the practical portion is easier. Identifying muscles n' bones n' such? Easy. Answering questions about clinical correlates that mostly apply to the Physician Assistant students we have class with? Not as easy, but it could be way worse. Will I ever again need to know that damaging the long thoracic nerve leads to a winged scapula? No, but it was mildly interesting.
Anatomy lab has been a blast. There are four donors split between our class and no shade to the other groups but I'm pretty sure I got the best donor and the best group of classmates. Our donor has excellent musculature and low body fat which makes dissection a breeze. I didn't do an anatomy lab in college so this might be a drag for people who have done it before.
I guess there's a reason I called this blog "Lab Life" because here I go talking about yet another lab. AT has a weekly lab where we learn to gross specimens from donors. The best one this month was the placenta. You get to make something called a membrane roll (pictured below). I can't explain why but it is very satisfying.
Photo stolen from Carie Boykin, MHS, PA (ASCP)
Lillian's West Virginia Weather Report: Winter Edition
As a born and bred corn-fed Midwesterner I'm no stranger to winter weather. However, several classmates were from Southern states and have a very different opinion on the weather here. Sadly for them I'm writing this so all you get is my very biased and subjective opinion. Winter here sucks. It doesn't get too cold. It only got below zero degrees for a few days total and the windchill was only like -15. Weak. I'm not going to hate on a warm winter but I will hate on the lack of snow. The only good part of winter is looking at all the pretty snow and getting up to shenanigans in that pretty snow. There was one high quality snow session here that closed campus for a day. I took a nice walk around the Core Arboretum to enjoy it. The roads here are sketchy even without ice and snow so try to stay home if you're not used to driving in those conditions. Make some friends in class too so you can ask them for rides if your car can't manage the weather. This concludes my weather report.
Comments