So, it’s the end of the school term here, and I’ve been grading my students’ lab practicals. Many of the stations in the lab practical consisted of dissected fetal pigs with pins stuck through specific organs. Students had to identify the organs and describe their functions.
Grading lab practicals is usually a pretty dull task. It’s on par with reading utility bills. And I’m not talking about utility bills that say, “Pay us now or we cut you off.” Those utility bills can be pretty exciting, though not in a way anyone really enjoys. No, no. We’re talking pure, unrelenting, tooth-dulling, life-sucking monotony, here. The kind that makes the last of your brain cells commit suicide from boredom as you take off that one last point.
The only things that liven up these hours of drudgery are: 1) trying to decipher student handwriting and 2) unintentionally funny student bloopers. The appeal of diversion 1 is rather limited. After you’ve puzzled out that what looks like “lceolueuj” is actually “kidney,” or that “nuelocovpal” is “metacarpal,” the thrill is gone. And it becomes replaced by a whopping case of eyestrain. As a TA, I can tell you that, when you have to choose between boredom with no headache, or minimal interest with a headache, you’ll go for the boredom every time. Oh, sure, sure–some of the new TAs, the real rookies, the ones who think of each and every one of their teaching duties as a priviledge, might choose otherwise. But they don’t keep that up for long. A midterm or two is enough to cure them of it.
So that leaves us with option 2, which can provide small sparks of sanity-saving merriment in the deep, long, forlorn grading darkness. In the spirit of generosity that academia does its best to squelch, I’m sharing these little points of light with you:
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I had one guy who identified ovaries on a male pig and testes on a female pig. Same guy, different pigs. I wonder if his difficulties with organ ID are limited to dead fetal pigs, or if he has similar problems with live human specimens.
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One guy managed to find a cerebellum on a model of a human heart. Students who’ve been studying seriously might have hearts on the brain, and I suppose those with a love of neurology have brains close to their hearts. But there’s no way the two have merged to become the same organ.
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According to one student, the pancreas is “The most hormonal gland in the body.” This confuses me. Just how does one assess the relative hormonality of a gland? Does the pancreas really beat out, say, the thyroid for the “most hormonal” distinction? Or is it that the pancreas was voted “most hormonal” in its senior class, and the other glands are just jealous? And isn’t the pancreas, like, hwaaaaay hormonalicious?
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There is, apparently, a part of the brain called the “ponds.”[sup]1[/sup] I suppose that’s where humans secrete cold cream. Either that, or it’s where those overworked dendrites in student brains go to get away from it all. They have little cabins near the ponds, where the morning mist clears with each beautiful sunrise. A few days at the ponds, with a little fishing, maybe some birding, far, far away from that nagging soma, and the dendrites are good as new.
In truly relaxed mammals[sup]2[/sup], such as three-toed sloths, cats that sleep all the time, and that guy in your dorm who was permanently stoned, the ponds have been modified into lakes. In some cases, lakes with full-service spas, including massage, saunas, and facials, for a dispelling of neuronal stress that, if it worked any better, the organism would be permanently horizontal.
[sup]1[/sup] I assume that she meant to write url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pons]“pons.”
[sup]2[/sup] As opposed to me. I’m uptight enough–and geeky enough–to put footnotes in an SDMB post. I’ve been in grad school way too long.
