This January, I was given the opportunity to take the Introduction to Human Anatomy and Physiology janplan class. I’m a senior biology major and have finished all of my major requirements so I didn’t need to take this class, but I’m interested in the material and figured that it would be helpful to be at least familiar with human A&P when I’m eventually in medical school.
During the first week of class, I thought that the workload was too much and I considered dropping the class. Throughout this week, Dr. Klepach kept reinforcing that the first week was the hardest and that he really just wanted us to learn how to deal with a heavy workload and learn the material while still eating three meals a day, working out each week, getting eight hours of sleep each night, and keeping our stress level low. At first, I thought this was insane. How was I possibly supposed to learn all of these bones and muscles and not be stressed?! However, throughout the month, I realized that this was possible. The way the class was set up allowed work to be spread out so that we continued to reinforce the material through quizzes and preparing for lecture and class. By doing this, studying for a bigger exam or working on a bigger project ended up not being as stressful or time consuming as I imagined it would be.
The following weeks were still intense but were more manageable. Although we had quizzes before most lectures, another lab practical, a grand rounds presentation, and a few lab assignments left, Dr. Klepach’s advice of studying to learn the material and not for the grade really helped to make the class less daunting. As a premed student, I’m used to focusing only on the grades I receive and my GPA, but this class made me focus on actually knowing the material. Out of all of the classes I’ve taken at Colby, I’ve learned the most in this class. I don’t think this is because of the sheer amount of material thrown at us and if only a little stuck with us, it would be more information than some classes teach in a semester, but rather that I was actually working to learn the information and not just studying so that I could remember the material only in order to do well on the next test.
I highly recommend this class. I think it’s a great class for any premed student, any biology major, as well as any student who is just interested in anatomy and physiology. We were given so many interesting opportunities that no other class really offers. I can’t think of another biology class that performs any sort of dissection, that teaches the important skill of giving a grand rounds presentation, or that has lectures from specialists such as Dr. Zak Nashed and Dr. Peter Millard. During this month, we learned so much and we only just scratched the surface. I found this class so fascinating and wish that it could have been a semester long, or even a year long, course.
