I just failed my first Anatomy lab practical.

[velvette]

Hey guys,

I'm taking my last pre-requisite (Anatomy, quite an important one) and just received my score for our first lab practical - an awful 51%.

Admittedly, I knew I did badly, but was honestly expecting around a high D, not a low F. I know exactly what went wrong; I got sick earlier in the week and was sick when I took the actual practical (which was on a Thursday). This not only cut into crucial study time (I have practically no motivation to study when I don't feel well) but completely ruined my focus. I spent the majority of the practical concentrating unreasonably hard on trying not to throw up from the cadaver smell.

I was averaging an 88% in the class before this test (based on our lecture test/quizzes)...now I completely DIPPED to a 70%!! I'm extremely upset and feeling really discouraged...before, getting an A would have been very doable but now it seems like an extreme reach. I really needed an A in this class since my overall GPA isn't all that great.

I'm not sure what to do. I don't think my study habits are too bad (considering I've done well on everything but this damn practical) but man, I am KICKING myself for allowing myself to get sick and screw up such an important test. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Neats, BSN]

What you need to do is dust yourself off and get back up, do any extra credit you can and move forward. Good things are worth the pain to get at.

I am a horrible test taker...always have been. I am also a smart person but I know what I need to do to study. repetition for me is crucial and I am also very tactile.

I place sticky notes all over the place in the kitchen, in the bathroom on doors so when I am doing dishes I am studying, when I am in the bathroom getting ready for the day I am studying even if it to learn a sentence or two.

I also have an old cassette recorder I record the questions in the back of each chapter and answers, I record any bold concepts or what the instructor thinks you should really know. When I am driving I listen to that...I am studying. You would be surprised how much studying you can get done this way.

[BBboy]

You said it yourself, being sick cut into your study time. Anatomy practicals are pretty straightforward in that they show whether or not somebody really spent the proper amount of time preparing. Just study more for the next one. If you aren't able to correctly identify the material that you're going to be tested on then that signifies you're not yet ready for the exam

[windsurfer8, BSN, RN]

If you are unable to complete something due to medical issue you need to go to the doctor and get some type of documentation. That grade doesn't care if you are sick or ill. It is permanent. If you are a nurse and don't feel well and you perform at an F level you may very well be fired.

Learn from this. No matter what is going on in your life..when you take a test you are saying you are "fit for duty" just the same as when you assume care of a patient. At that point whatever else is going on does not matter.

[oldsockventriloquist]

What you need to do is dust yourself off and get back up, do any extra credit you can and move forward. Good things are worth the pain to get at.

I am a horrible test taker...always have been. I am also a smart person but I know what I need to do to study. repetition for me is crucial and I am also very tactile.

I place sticky notes all over the place in the kitchen, in the bathroom on doors so when I am doing dishes I am studying, when I am in the bathroom getting ready for the day I am studying even if it to learn a sentence or two.

I also have an old cassette recorder I record the questions in the back of each chapter and answers, I record any bold concepts or what the instructor thinks you should really know. When I am driving I listen to that...I am studying. You would be surprised how much studying you can get done this way.

Most of those study tips would probably not help for anatomy practicals, unless you are an incredible artist and can draw structures on sticky notes. I imagine you are studying bones, organs, or histology (microscopic tissues). You need to figure out what makes each structure unique and have looked at enough labeled and unlabeled examples to know it when presented on a test. How would you know you were looking at esophageal tissue by looking at a slide? You'll see stratified squamous tissue for the epithelium. If you're looking at a cross-section of the entire tissue (transverse), you'll see the cavity where food and water goes down surrounded by that epithelial tissue, and the mucularis mucosae, mucularis externa, etc. How would you find the linea aspera? Well, first you'd have to know what the femur looks like, then be able to find the longitudinal line along the shaft (you'd also have to understand where the shaft ends and other parts begin of the femur). You can only do this by studying pictures, models, or slides with labels and then quizzing yourself when there are no labels.