This photo was taken on one of my last days at Sydney uni, where I have been for the last couple of weeks. If you look closely you can see me in the second row in what is the ultimate photobomb. Seriously.
I was lucky enough to be invited to spend two weeks in the lab, participating in a part of the uni's 8 week whole body dissection elective which runs in the summer break. Everyone else in white is in their final year of a post grad med degree, and the people in green are either surgical registras or professors of anatomy.
Before you ask, yes- it is weird to spend 2 weeks legitimately cutting up dead bodies- but you seriously don't even notice how creepy it should be because it's just so freaking cool. I can't tell you how fascinating the whole experience was, it's like nothing I have ever done before. And you learn so much! After spending the best part of your day painstakingly dissecting out a particular branch of the facial nerve there is no way in hell you are ever going to forget it.
Dissection is a completely different style of learning because you really learn about the anatomical relationships of different structures in the area where you're working. I spent most of my time with the two teams doing head and neck, and I learned so much in such a short amount of time. Because I've only just finished my first year and we haven't covered much neuroanatomy at all, I thought that I would be waaaay out of my depth and that everyone would think I was an absolute idiot. But it worked out great because I could follow along with everything they were saying and if I didn't fully understand, someone was always glad to talk me through it.
Before I got there, I had this image in my head of a deathly silent lab crowded with nerdy freaks bent over bodies and talking in medical language so sophisticated that I wouldn't even be able to hold a conversation. What I found on the first day could not have been more reassuring. Yes, most of them are nerdy (you kind of have to be to get in here in the first place) but everyone I met was so chilled out, kind and genuine, I couldn't have asked for a better group. We worked together in teams of about 8, meeting in the morning for a debrief of the days goals and other relevant info. The clinical lectures were fantastic because they linked the things we were learning with situations and symptoms we might come across in practice.
Most days we worked until 11am, which had become the unofficial break for a cup of tea and a sneaky game of table tennis in the common room. Back to work for a couple of hours before another lunch break outside in the sun, and then most people stayed around until about 4pm.
It was a pretty similar schedule every day, and though we covered sooo much anatomy in each session it surprised me just how relaxing and how fun the environment was. We worked together, teaching and learning from other students as well as the professors and demonstrators. I got to know them all quite well that when it came time to leave I realised how easily I could have stayed on for the rest of the course.
One of the best things for me was to get to know people who are at the opposite end of my degree, who are about to graduate and who still feel like they don't know enough (which is both reassuring and horribly scary.) People who are living real lives alongside their study and work, not just hanging out at college in their spare time. I met someone with a young daughter who I spoke to about balancing her time between being a doctor/surgeon and having a family as well. Hopefully all this kind of stuff is way in the future where I'm concerned, but it's nice to know that there are people out there doing what I want to do and that I'm not alone in my fears and worries.
I am so grateful for having been given such an incredible opportunity, and I hope that I can keep on seizing every little thing that comes my way. Most importantly I hope that I continue to love what I do and to have fun in my work- whatever that may be. Most immediately, I think that this experience has made me reconsider applying to do the dissection elective at my own uni in Townsville this year. I think that if I am even considering surgery as a career path (which I am- I don't want to not do it) then it is definitely something that will help me. Who knows where I am headed or what I will do, as long as I enjoy it then I'm happy!
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