Holding a Human Brain

Yes, that's right. I got to hold a human brain! It was required that I go to the lab for my Brain and Mind class and I am sooooo glad I did. It was the coolest thing ever! Holding a brain or dissecting things does not bother me one bit. I have dissected so many things in Diversity of Life at Central College. And last semester, I volunteered one day each week in helping a student skin shrews for a project she was doing. Yup, I actually skinned shrews last semester. For those of you who do not know what a shrew is . . . . here is a picture to the right. Anyway, I started the day with going grocery shopping with Teresa. I decided to make tacos this week and some other recipes. I brought a cookbook over here from home and I try one recipe from it every week. It's kinda fun! After grocery shopping, I went over to Teresa's flatt with Mel and we made rice krispie treats. The only marshmallows that that Morrisons had were pink, so the rice krispie treats ended up being a little pink. But they looked delicious anyway. We couldn't eat them though because they were for Teresa's society meeting on Thursday. It was beautiful outside that I didn't have to wear a coat when walking back to my flatt. I think the last time I didn't have to wear a coat outside was in October. It felt amazing. After working on my OP journals a little more, I then went to my lab for Brain and Mind. I met outside the Psychology building with other students and then we all filed into the room. We had to leave our jackets in another room and then went to put on aprons and gloves. This was all too familiar for me because it was just like my chemistry labs. You could tell some of the students had never done this before because they were all hyper about the gloves and aprons. After a professor came in and told us the safety measures, we were all split up into three different color groups and then went to our assigned table. There were only two whole brains so we didn't get the whole brain at first. But they did have several different sections of the brain on the table. There were the two hemispheres cut in half, a right hemispher cut sagitally, and a section of the brain cut horizontally and coronally. We got to hold each section. It was sooooo cool! I got to see the ventricles, amygdala, hippocampus, mammillary bodies, and a lot more. After a while, we got a whole brain from another table and passed it around. That was really neat. Unfortunately we couldn't take in phones or cameras, otherwise I would have taken pictures. There was a guy at my table during the lab that he fell back against the wall and almost fell onto the floor before some people were there to help him. He had almost fainted from the smell! These brains had been soaked in formaldehyde for a long time but then for the last two weeks they had been run under running water so there was no smell at all. Apparently they guy couldn't take it. There was another girl at my table as well that had to leave and then come back with a mask over her mouth. The lab lasted about 30 minutes. After that I met up with Ashley and we walked to the pier, the stone circle, Morrisons, and then back to the dorms. I made dinner and then met up with Annie so we could walk together to choir. I'm not a big fan of choir being so late but I'm still happy that I'm in it.The practices go from 7:30 to 9:30. And they really do last two hours. We do have a tea break for about 10 minutes in the middle where they actually have tea and coffee for sale. During the break, an elderly lady came up to me and asked me if my hair was naturally curly. Then she said she sees all these tv commercials on how to straighten the hair and she is appalled by it. She said they all look like sheep. Then she told me not to straighten my hair because she rarely sees people with curly hair anymore. I reassured her I wouldn't straighten it. I definately won't because first of all, I didn't bring a straightener and second of all, it takes about an hour to fully straighten my hair. Overall, it had been a very fun day.