Dental School Semester 1 in Review: Biochemistry & Anatomy

I'm back finally and ready to fill you in on my first semester of dental school. The fact that I haven't posted anything since the end of my first month should tell you that things were pretty busy. I did have some free time, but the last thing I wanted to do with the little bit I had was sit in front of this computer for another 30 minutes. Anyway, what I'll do is breakdown the semester by class, so you can see what we have to deal with our first semester at U. of Colorado. I don't know how typical our schedule is, given we take Part I of the Boards the summer after our first year, but it will give you some idea what dental school here is like. And then, if I have time, I'll throw in some of the fun stuff I did this semester!

Biochemistry:
We had biochemistry classes from August 19th through October 24th. You can see the schedule (click here), but we basically had class 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. It was the first of our "big" classes for 1st semester, being given about 5 credit hours for the class. If you had 1st semester of biochemistry in undergrad, you won't find that surprises you, but the speed at which the class progresses can be challenging. If you didn't have biochem in undergrad, I the class could be a little more difficult. The most challenging aspect of our class was the fact that the professor would use "more than one but not all" as a choice for many of the questions on our tests, which were multiple choice. Of course, if you came from a school where the biochem teacher would give you a blue book and tell you to start drawing structures of everything you know, a slightly tougher multiple choice doesn't seem that hard. The tests could be hard, but everything was curved so that 2/3 of the class ended up with either and A or A-. No one failed. Oh, and if you really love drawing structures you'll find our Biochem class dissappointing: you will never have to draw any structures for the tests. Being able to draw structures might help you remember stuff, but you'll probably find your time spent better just going through the powerpoints and practice tests. Another thing, there's really no reason to read from the book.

Anatomy:
Our anatomy class started October 19th and went through the end of the semester. We started 7-hour days of anatomy on Oct. 22nd and dissection lab on the 28th. While we didn't have 7-hour days everyday, it was about a 9 credit hour class crammed into half of a semester, so you can imagine how busy things were. The class really consisted of five parts: gross anatomy, neurology, angiology, histology (without all the histological slides, thank god), and very simple embryology.
Gross anatomy was only from the waist up and no muscles of the forearm or hand. Obviously, the focus was on head and neck, which was very detailed and challenging. The craziest part was when we used the "Butcher Boy" band saw to bisect the upper-half of the cadaver along the midline (think down the middle of the nose) and then procede to dissect various parts of the head, nasal cavity, oral cavity, orbit, and cranial cavity on both sides of the body. Muscles were usually easy; the most difficult part was finding and keep straight the various nerves and their branches throughout the head and neck.
Neurology was probably the most time-consume part of the class, have to learn what kind of axons went where, what they did, where they would leave one nerve and joine another, where their cell bodies resided in either the central nervous system or peripherial nervous system, and where information was relayed to in the various parts of the brain.
Angiology was simple but also somewhat time consuming: basically we had to be able to tell you the route blood would flow from the heart to some part of the body and then back to the heart. Sometimes, the professor would say one particular route was blocked and so you'd have to detail a less obvious route. We did not deal with dieseases of the circulatory system.
Histology was simply an overview of the various types of cell and tissue types of the body. Pretty straight forward, and I don't remember there being any histological slides (as there are no histological slides on the boards).
Embryology was the easiest part and consisted primarily of knowing what parts of the head and neck developed from which of the four pharyngeal arches. Very straight forward and easy to remember.
All in all, anatomy was a memorable experience. I usually spent 5 more hours a day outside of class studying for this class once it started. Most everyone else was studying like this or more, though, so there were always people at school to study with. This made things go fairly smoothly, even making it fun sometimes! Well, everyone says anatomy is our hardest class, and I got through with a B, so I'm a happy camper.

These were our main two classes for the 1st semester. I'll go over the myriad of other classes we had in my next segment.