What did you learn at school today?

           The lesson a teacher may intend to teach is not always the lesson a student will choose to learn. Such is the case when it comes to my class's labs this past semester. I've noticed certain interesting and possibly disturbing themes accompanying each one. Lets discuss them, it's not like we have anything better to do.

         There was a wide range of borderline fun experiments we were assigned to do for my Physics 106 lab. Most of which involved the behavior of light which called for many hours staring out windows through various instruments. Whether it was a make shift telescope or a hand held spectrometer it was to the windows we went to test them out. Considering the campus was still alive with students hustling around it was not uncommon to catch ourselves studying them instead of a frozen bush or a brick wall. Not to mention we were expected to record every little observation into notebook for future reference. We watched, analyzed and recorded every detail of the scenes we watched from afar.                                                                              

Lesson learned from Physics lab: 
How to be a spy

          O Chem was a bit different. As with most Chemistry labs it is fairly common sense that some of, if not all, the chemicals you will be handling will be less than healthy. Some are actually quite dangerous. You have to take and pass a safety test before you're allowed to participate in the lab for heaven sake.The funny thing was just how deadly my teacher made everything sound. Pain and cancer was around every corner. Naturally I was doubling up on rubber gloves and each lab took twice as long as it should due to being overly careful. The only time I ever had any carcinogens miss their mark was because my teacher spilled them on me during a demonstration. I have yet to keel over dead but that doesn't mean I've given up on the legitimacy of my fear.

Lesson learned from O Chem lab: How to be paranoid

         Probably my favorite would have to be my Physiology lab. Arguably it was 2 and a half hours of torture once a week, and not in the sarcastic sense. I've already talked about how rewards can change the way we feel about circumstances so at the time I didn't think too much about it but in retrospect it could easily be described as torturous. 

         Over the course of the semester they made us sweat, bleed, suffocate, drown, starve, freeze, and publicly humiliated us. We were electrocuted, stabbed by pointy things and had to eat and drink some rather unsavory things. 

In scientifically sound detail we:

-Endured breathing into a lung capacity measuring device until we were on the verge of passing out.

-Stimulated muscles until the tetanus threshold was reached with electrodes.

-Vigorously rode an exercise bike or held our breath with our head in ice water to see effects on heart rate.                                                      

-Drew blood to find hematocrit and blood type.

-Didn't eat anything all day on three separate occasions to measure fasting glucose levels or kidney filtration rates. (I like food.)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152273637034622

 -Drank saline and urinated into a cup every 15 minutes until I could no longer pee until the next day regardless of how much I drank. (We had to carry our cup of urine through the halls of the Benson from the bathroom to our class. By the end there was no shame between me and my classmates.)

-Pricked my finger 6 times to measure blood glucose after eating an uncomfortable amount of dehydrated mashed potatoes.

-Had to show off our public speaking skills with a strictly judged oral presentation.

-(probably worst of all) Were forced to wait. In between many of the measurements our patience was tested as we sat hungry and bored with nothing to do.


         I'm not even going to mention the lab reports we had to write about each one or my diabetes scare but looking back the list of unpleasant things we had to do is lengthy. In the end it was all worth letting everyone know everything about the inner workings of my body and get to know all of them much more than I thought necessary. Why? Because I passed the class. And in the end that's all that matters (except for the other important parts of course, they matter too I guess).

Lesson learned from Physiology lab: How to be a sadist


       Yes I know this post doesn't have anything to do with Christmas or the new year....but I don't care. Maybe 2014 will be better. Happy new year er'body!