There is no two ways about it, Gross Anatomy is the single most time consuming and challenging class you will ever find yourself facing. Unless of course you are an anatomy guru in which case it comes easy for you, but myself....I am no anatomy guru. I had to work, hard, and keep working to get very point to achieve the milestone of passing gross anatomy.
1. get a atlas....or two :)
I had a previous edition of Netter's lying around, plus I picked up a Rohen's and a Thieme.
I found I did not use the Netter's as much. I liked the Thieme over the Netters due to the fact that the Thieme has charts in it which helped me to organize and condense information about origin, action and insertion. I also liked the more stylized drawings than the hand drawing style of Netters. But this is entirely a matter of personal preference. What I would recommend is going to your school's library and looking at both of these atlases and determining which style you like best and will work best for your learning style.
I could not have survived however without my Rohen's. I used this to study the cadaver look at home when I could not physically be in lab. I feel like when I did this before we dissected I had a better idea of what to look for in the lab. Plus, I found that most tagged examples for practicals were based on the best cadaver example in class so looking at an idealized picture of a cadaver with how it would appear was exceedingly helpful.
2. the textbook to end all textbooks: grays anatomy for students
I tried the text recommended by our school which was essential clinical anatomy and I personally did not like it. It was too brief and I found the text to be very choppy. I did not use it much for my first exam and while I did well I felt like there was a lack of understanding on my part that I could not quite explain. So I researched on amazon and saw the great reviews of gray's anatomy for students and decided to try this book for my future studies. I used this book for the last three units of anatomy and really felt that the way it was laid out and the order of the text correlated well with my notes. I felt like when I used this text in conjunction with the notes that I gained a better understanding of the material and it eeked over into lab as well.
3. study for class and lab together, do not treat them as separate entities.
I made this mistake for the first exam. I tried to treat the written class portion and the practical lab portion as two separate yet equal entities. For all subsequent unit exams, I would study my lecture notes with an atlas open and my text open and integrate what I was reading into what I would see in the lab. Anatomy is such a highly visual subject and I am a highly visual learner so this worked really well for me. Again, what works for any person is highly personal and you will have to figure out what works best for you but I do recommend integrating the two portions of the class as it helps in both areas to make studying a little better.
4. time in teh lab, time in the laba nd time in the lab
there is no two ways about it, you need to spend a significant part of your time outside of class in the lab looking at cadavers. I personally was fond of Saturday mornings as I found that I was often by myself or with a few other people. I never found it helpful to be in groups as I needed to work through the material at my own pace with my own methodology.
I know these are all what worked best for me, so take what you feel you can use and eliminate what maynot work. But this is how I survived anatomy :)
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