Human Anatomy at Colby

Coming into BI265, I didn’t know what to expect at first. Sitting in the first class, I felt really intimidated by the amount of work that we were going to do. All I saw flashing in front of my eyes was the number of quizzes and tests that we were going to be taking in three weeks! However, I talked with one of the TAs, Charlie Furlong, and he reassured my anxious feelings. He told me that the focus of this class wasn’t just a number next to my name in some grade book; it was about how much I could push myself as a student to learn one of the toughest concepts in science in a really short period of time.

 Dr. Klepach was very understanding of this daunting task in front of us, and he kept our stress to a minimum, telling us not to worry about how we would do on assignments, but rather understand why the question was asked in the sense of a big picture. My favorite part of BI265 was doing the pig heart dissection. Coming from a summer where a worked as a Dental Assistant and an Oral Surgery Clinic, I was excited to delve into more live anatomy rather than just looking at diagrams. Cutting a window into my heart to expose the papillary muscle was a super cool experience, and when I showed the pictures to all of my friends, they thought it was just as cool.

Thank you Dr. Klepach for an amazing Jan-Plan. He made the time well worth it and I enjoyed every one of his labs and lectures. I enjoyed his class so much that I am going to become one of his Teaching Assistants for the Anatomy class in the fall.

The A&P JanPlan was a great learning experience, not only academically, but also in terms of learning about my own health and wellness as a student. One of the activities that I felt taught me the most was the lifestyle log that we were encouraged to keep throughout the length of the course. Each day, we would record our hours of sleep, exercise, level of stress, and meals. This encouraged me to form healthier habits and learn to balance my schoolwork with my personal health. As a student, it is easy to try to sacrifice things like sleep or healthy eating in the pursuit of good grades, but this class taught me that those things should be prioritized, as they are the keys to longevity, and grades are just fleeting. 

My favorite activity of the semester was easily the pig heart dissection. Getting the hands-on experience was great, because there is no better way to learn the anatomy than to get to see into the organ yourself. I really enjoyed how Dr. K allowed us to explore the hearts on our own, dissecting them however we thought would be interesting/insightful, and provided us guidance/answers when we requested it. 

A topic that I found really interesting was the problematic history of BMI. Prior to the course, I knew a little bit about the BMI controversy, but I enjoyed being able to go in depth and learn about it in a course activity. I think it is our responsibility as future healthcare professionals to know about and acknowledge the discriminatory aspects of the field, such as BMI, and to strive to improve the industry. I look forward to learning more about this issue on my own, now that I have a better understanding provided to me by the A&P course. 

The course definitely flew by. Each lecture was packed with copious amounts of information, but once you find a learning strategy that works for you it becomes much easier to digest all the content coming at you. Moving forward, I will definitely be applying everything I learned in this course to my future academic experiences, not just the content that we covered but also the habits I developed to work toward being the healthiest version of myself while balancing a busy schedule. 

Elle Lincoln