Help with prereqs(Anatomy and physiology)

FLDoula · Nov 29, 2009

I'm enjoying A&P. The hardest part? There has not been a hardest part yet in A&P 1 for me. There is a necessity to study ALL of it the most. The bones and muscles require lots of memorization but there are also many concepts to understand and know. My biggest recommendation is to allow study time pretty much every day. That way you are not trying to cram in the last few days before a test. Also make good use of your textbooks companion website if they have one, and there are great resources in the sticky above marked A&P, from my brain to yours. Good luck!

itsmejuli · Nov 29, 2009

I liked both A&P classes and did well in them.

You need to put the time and effort into these classes to do well.

20 hours a week of quality study time could get you an A.

QuarterLife88, MSN, RN, NP · Nov 29, 2009

Hardest?

Defninitely muscles for me. It's not hard to figure out where they are on the body from a diagram or learn the tissue make-up and even muscle contraction is not that hard to understand, but having to learn the origins, insertions, and actions is a killer. I wanted to kill myself during that section - I lost sleep over this section. My lab practical test, and the way it was set-up was also awful, but that is solely a specific class issue, and you shouldn't worry about that. I had to learn about 90 muscle origins/insertion/actions, fortunately I hear other A&P classes don't have to learn nearly as many. It varies from school to school I guess. Just leave yourself about a month to study for this section at least a half an hour, to an hour a day.

Other than that, A&P, as the other poster said requires daily study to do well (and you should do fairly well if you do that). It's not something to let sit and stew and then look at 2 days before the test. Go to lecture, come home and STUDY - do something with it. Everyday. Yes, even the weekends (it's not forever). That's much less stress than cramming. I've gotten A's on all of my lecture exams so far following this method. The only part that slightly screws me is the lab exams:angryfire which I have gotten a (B+ and C+ on respectively), and the horrible way they are set up and the short amount of time we have to actually view the models before a test.

A&P 1 seems to be more anatomy, and A&P seems to be more physiology from I have seen. I don't like anatomy that much. The little bit of physio we do in A&P 1 I love and it clicks a lot faster for me, which is perhaps why I do better on my lecture exams because the material explains more how things work, and why, and that makes sense to me. So I have a feeling that A&P 2 will be easier. I've heard as much.

Good luck.

Lorra_D · Nov 29, 2009

I took anatomy, microbiology and physiology at a local college and I found flash cards and diagrams were most helpful for me (since I am a very visual person).

What helped me most was to have several copies of plain diagrams of the muscles or bones, and just fill them in. Drawing it myself helped a lot too, but took a lot of time.

As far as the physiology part, I wrote lots of notes. I sectioned off each organ and wrote it's functions.

Most importantly, time is the key. Make lots of time to study the material and you will do fine.

Good luck!

Infinisynth · Nov 29, 2009

Like they said, if you put effort into it you'll be fine. The hardest part for me was the endocrine and digestive systems in ANP II. I didn't find the bones and muscles to be too difficult but every teacher is different and fortunately we didn't have to get super in-depth with everything. Study study study.

tiffjh2 · Nov 30, 2009

I liked both A&P classes and did well in them.
You need to put the time and effort into these classes to do well.
20 hours a week of quality study time could get you an A.

yeah a lot of people told me to study two hours a day instead of cramming the night before the test. I did better when I didn't cram. I always forgot everything an hour later.

studentCL2009 · Dec 2, 2009

Cramming will not work. I usually study for about 5 days per week @ 3 hours per day. It's a lot of information to learn in a short period of time. I wil probably make a B in the class this semester. I will miss an A by only a few points, but I'm pretty sure my prof won't give those points.

Just study hard. If you have never had good study habits, I would suggest going to half price books or barnes and noble and reading about how to study. That helped me. Or you could just google it I guess. Anyway, good luck!

RetroReactive · Dec 2, 2009

Soon I will be starting my anatomy and physiology class. I was just wandering what the hardest part of it was and what should I study the most. A lot of people told me the muscle system but I just wanted some other imput. Thank you for your time!

I took it in highschool, not college yet. But the hardest part is having to know and REMEMBER everything you learn. Know all the bones in the body, all the muscles, know every system. I was fascinated by the class and absolutely loved learning about it. I love learning the systems and how they work... but trying to remember every bone in the body- BOORING. You just have to push yourself.

Good Luck.

alissadancer · Dec 2, 2009

The absolute hardest parts are the Circulatory/Respiratory systems which are typically featured in A+P2.

A+PI is much much easier, IMO. It's a lot of memorizing bones, muscles, etc. It's stuff you can actually visualize. Plus there is a lot less biochem. The Nervous system can bit a bit tricky, but even that is doable.

Honestly, it all come down to your professor. Having a great professor makes it so much easier to succeed. Even though it's not very scientific or unbiased, I recommend Ratemyprofessor.com to check out your profs before you take them. Unfortunately my school has classes that fill up while the instructor is still "TBA." I've wound up with some stinkers.

And aside from your professor, of course, studying many hours per day really does help.

This might sound strange, but I've actually done a lot better in accelerated winter/summer intersession courses. You learn the material so quickly, that you don't have time to forget it by the time the test rolls around. It's a month or two of pure hell, but for some reason it works better for me.

jennifer7010 · Dec 2, 2009

I think it all depends on what you are interested in and what you are not interested in. I like to go to the gym so I thought the muscles were easier for me because I was already interested in them. The endocrine system however was near impossible for me. So it is all basically up to what you you like. I think it is easier to learn if you are interested in the subject.

:specs:

justmang · Dec 1, 2010

I'm currently in A&P 1 and about to fail. The way my class is set up the physiology portion of the class is worth 75% of the final grade, while the anatomy lab makes up the other 25%. In the physiology section we have a quiz every week, a take home quiz every two weeks, and 3 exams. The anatomy lab consists of 4 practicals in which there are ten models, five labelled parts (bone/muscle/nerves/digestive) per model, and a woman with a stop watch telling you to move every two minutes. The reason I ask is because I can't imagine being able to juggle this class with a full schedule. I have a high 90 in the physiology portion of the class, but I can't manage to memorize the hundreds of terms on the practical. I can't memorize things that I can make sense of, but memorizing each bone is too much to handle. I know nursing school is a lot of hard work and I'm not concerned about that, but how much of it is learning about the body versus memorizing random bones? Should I change professions?