Hey, guys, welcome to my first vlog on this channel
and actually it's not my first vlog
because I just recorded one and then realized that I didn't turn the mic on.
So, uh, we're gonna do this again. We're gonna try it again.
Today I wanted to address something I get a lot of questions about,
and that's people's first dissections.
I get a lot of messages from people that are like "Hey, Emily, I'm going into my biology class today
and we're dissecting kittens or earthworms or frogs or whatever
and do you have any advice?"
And I guess my advice to you guys would be
just to go for it.
Because the longer you spend psyching yourself out for something like this,
like, the less you're going to get out of the actual experience itself.
Um.
You're gonna get- You're gonna get yourself all hyped up about it,
you're gonna get really nervous about it, you'll be thinking about it all during lunch,
like, should I be eating lunch, should I not be eating lunch,
I'm gonna go dissect this thing, it's really gross,
and then some of you are nervous because you're excited about it
and you don't know how to feel about that excitement,
like 'Is there something wrong with me? Like, why am I so excited about this kind of thing?'
Don't worry about understanding it all at one time.
Um. There's gonna be a lot going on.
Um. There will be the smell, there will be the sights, there will be
the experience of taking a scalpel and cutting through tissue for the first time.
It'll be something new.
And it's something that you should embrace.
And that's something that you should try to teach yourself something out of it.
And then share this information with your friends and with your family, you know,
you can say, like, 'Today at school, when we dissected this pig, and it was so gross
and I was really grossed out, but the one thing I got out of it
is that the liver is the size of an eraser.'
You know. Like that is information that people want to know.
And they will be like: 'Really? I didn't know that the liver of a pig,
a fetal pig, was the same size as a pencil eraser. That's really cool.'
And you're putting these kind of things in context,
you're putting this information that you have visually taken in yourself,
nobody has told you this, you learned this on your own.
You know. And it was observational skills that brought you where you are today.
And it's really important to take that out of those experiences,
because it's not every day you get to dissect a pig.
Or a cat. Or whatever.
I've been talking with a friend who's getting his undergraduate degree in zoology in the UK
and it is illegal for him to dissect things.
Those kind of experiences let people know what kind of person they are.
You know. It's ok if you don't get excited about biology,
it's ok if you don't get excited about your first dissection
and you go into it and you're just so grossed out you, like, wanna throw up
and you, and you, you know, maybe will learn that one thing,
that I'm wanting you to take out of it
is whatever you glean from this experience
but it's ok to never want to do it again, too.
That's totally fine.
But I retain that is still an imperative experience for people who are going into biology
to practice these things and to have experienced them.
So I guess for you who are nervous about going out and doing your first dissection
just embrace it. Just grab it and bring it home and hold it there.
You know. Just- Just really try to get something out of it.
Um. Even if that's the fact that you don't ever want to do it again, that's fine.
But for those of you who are looking forward to this kind of thing,
or want pointers or tips,
I just encourage you to keep an open mind and to explore what is in there.
You've been given this opportunity to learn in a hands-on environment
and it's amazing and we're losing these kind of opportunities in our school systems today,
um, and we shouldn't be.
So I want you to enjoy it. And I want you to have a good time.
And I want you to tell me what you learned.
I want you to send me a message, I want you to get in touch with me,
um, and tell me what you learned. Tell me what you found out.
I mean- I can't predict what that will be for you.
But maybe it's- Maybe it's another kind of organ size or maybe you didn't know
how things were laid out or maybe you had preconceptions about what it was gonna be like
and then it was something totally different, I want to know!
I wanna share in these experiences with you and I wanna encourage you
to- to enjoy them and to- to learn something.
So, thanks for watching my first vlog.
Yeaaah hopefully more to come in the future,
maybe, I'm not gonna make any promises,
maybe I should just end this, I don't know what to say.
Yay.
Alright. Bye.
Hey. One more thing.
Audible.com wants to support The Brain Scoop
and its creators and they wanna give you a free audiobook.
I highly recommend Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.
If you wanna go download that, that's audible.com/brainscoop.
So, get yourself a free audiobook and I will see you at audible.com/brainscoop.