Human Anatomy in 6 Weeks = The Medical Student Hazing Ritual

The UW med school starts students off by teaching them all the anatomy of the head, neck, thorax and abdomen in 6 weeks. We have about 8 hours of class a day, a pre-class quiz or an oral presentation almost everyday and a huge pin and written test looming in our near future. Classes take the form of listening to someone speed through about a 100 lecture slides in 60 minutes and then dissecting a cadaver. There are 4 students to a cadaver. My lab partners are Ana, Aya, and Laura. (There were more women this year than men so there are some lab groups that are all female).

We have decided that compressing all first year anatomy into 6 weeks doesn't have any other practical purpose than to be a hazing ritual for new medical students to be accepted into the medical community. There is no way that we will remember all this anatomy and I don't think it is possible to be able to claim that cramming anatomy into 6 weeks will make us better doctors.

From Wikipedia: "Hazing is an often ritualistic test, which may constitute harassment, abuse or humiliation with requirements to perform random, often meaningless tasks, sometimes as a way of initiation into a social group." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazing

Based on this definition, I believe that the anatomy in 6 weeks could be defined as hazing. 1) Compressed anatomy is ritualistic. Our professors had to do it, and their medical professors had to do it, and the medical students before them had to do it, so naturally they want to force us to do it. If I ever become a medical school professor, will I want to force my students to complete anatomy in 6 weeks? You bet! If I had to do it so should they. 2) OK, so maybe it is not abuse, but it is definitely humiliating to be put in a situation where you have trouble and you can't learn everything. 3) Yes, I would say this is an almost meaningless task because we probably won't remember anything. I will have to let you know in a couple years about this one. 4) Yes, it is definitely part of initiation into a social group. Are you convinced?

What the floor of my room often looks like when I am studying anatomy. At this point I am not sure if I will survive the intensive anatomy experience, but I hope to be fully accepted into the medical student community if I do.