It's like Christmas!!

9/25/12

So my first day of Grad classes was yesterday, and it wasn’t even that scary! It felt just like an undergrad class. My first class was Human Osteology with Dr. Pia Nystrom.  We went over the basics of bone biology, most of which I already knew, and got split into groups for lab. I’m in group 2 for lab meaning that I have a 2 hour break between class and my lab time. A few of the other students and I went to Moca, a café next to the department, for coffee. We hung out there until 3 then headed back to the department.

For lab we were split into groups of 4 given a box with an unarticulated skeleton and told to put it in order. My immediate reaction upon opening the box was “ It’s like Christmas!” because the bones were all wrapped up in tissue paper. We took all the bones out of the box and got started putting them in order. The larger bones were obviously easier to place and decide which side they go on. Two of us worked on the top half of the body, putting together the ribs and spinal column, and the other two put together the hands and feet. I got stuck with the feet. Oh lord did that take forever. There are so many bones in the feet and deciding which side they go on took forever. I ended up with an extra 3^rd metatarsal which had accidently been placed in the wrong box. Did you know you have two tiny bones under the joint of your big toe called seasamoid bones? Cause I didn’t. 

Today’s grad classes were a bit less exciting then yesterdays. I had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 7:30 for my 9am Funerary archaeology class. The class was packed when I got there, some people had to end up standing in the back. In the class we went over decomposition of corpses and the steps a body takes from immediately following death to skeletonization.  

Class got out early (10:30) and it was my only class of the day so I went and ran some errands. First I picked up my dissection tool kit from Blackwells book shop. For Human anatomy lab we are doing dissection on a human cadaver. So when we learn about the muscles in the arm, we will dissect the arm and so on. It’s really kind of worrying all of us; we talked about having a fainting couch available for when we all pass out. After picking up my handy dandy tool kit I met my friend Lisa for lunch at Toast, a sandwich shop.  I met Lisa during orientation and she’s from Germany. She’s really cool and a lot of fun to hang out with. After lunch I ran to the union to collect my new UK debit card, which means I can finally put money on my phone and be able to use it again, yay!

We had our first proper flat meeting today with all my roommates. I met the mysterious roommate in room A who couldn’t come until yesterday. Her name is Vicky and she’s from China, but she’s been living in the UK for the past 15 years.  We discussed chores like vacuuming and taking out the garbage, we ended up making a chore rotation chart. We also talked about communal stuff like silverware and pans.

I got an interview today for catering job which I’m pretty excited for. I hope I get it, I really need spending money!