The Anatomy Lesson

An unpublished essay, written when I was 26

I was recently looking through old files on my computer, and I discovered this essay I had written about some of my very first experiences in medical school. I have made nearly no edits (besides removing one incriminating portion). This was how I was thinking about anatomy when I was 26 years old, which now seems a lifetime ago. Surprisingly, my views have changed little.

The Anatomy Lesson

By January the venomous Chicago cold had crept into my bones, and I was halfway through twenty weeks of anatomy during my first year of medical school. The true cliché’s of cadaver dissection had begun to emerge in my life:  I found myself in escalating flirtation with one of my lab partners, S, who was, to my disappointment, sharing a cramped studio apartment with her boyfriend.  I was loathing a second, militant laboratory partner, A, who commandeered the scalpel, seeking validation for her desire to pursue surgery.   And, I was becoming friends with my third partner, C, a quietly funny girl from Minnesota. Of course, the upper classmen had joked about this: relationships would spark, friendships form, feuds develop.   I just never thought that all three would happen to me.  Anatomy, in those days, did more to define relationships among the living, than it did towards the dead…..