I Discover Dr. Who

Again with the early.  And it was actually even earlier because I went to open lab to study for the graded quiz that occurred.  I felt better about that one than the first one, but I still made a lot of mistakes.  However, i felt like I learned something, which surprised me, since i was pretty sure my brain had melted the day before.  If i didn't make it clear, these days are long.  And I mean really long.  It's pretty much eight hours of straight learning, and that's enough to drive anyone a little nuts, especially when you're in a windowless room full of skeletons.  I digress.

The first thing we did upon entering the building, besides get lost, was to steal food from the parent orientation tables.  This included several orange cranberry muffins and some bad coffee that was much needed.  Then we had our bone oral reports.  It's a good thing I went second because then I couldn't be judge on how well the people after me did.  Anyway, I wasn't very prepared.  It turns out theres over twenty landmarks on both the parietal and temporal.  Who knew? Well, Heidi knew and I was definitely supposed to.  Anyway, I did learn things from the presentations of others, which was helpful, but not every bone was presented on, which was less helpful.  I say that because now i had a rough idea of how to side some bones but no idea on others.

We had a guest speaker today, who was the head of the biological anthropology program and the osteology and trauma lab that we work in.  His lecture was on violence theory, and how that pertains to his projects.  Basically it was a really interesting lecture until the last few minutes.  It was already right before lunch, I'd eaten like four muffins, and he started showing us pictures of the cartel crimes scenes in Juarez.  These are pictures of decapitated and dismembered bodies.  Lunch lost its appeal.  However, I did find it in me to eat a gyro from pita pit.  Turns out the meal plan can be translated into $8.75 to spend at on campus restaurant, which was the highlight of the day.

After our lunch break, we were back in the lab.  Todays task: find the age and sex of a random skeleton and fill out a biological profile for the person.  this went fine, since we had an entire skeleton minus a few metacarpals, until we ran into a problem.  To find the sex of a skeleton, you can use several different landmarks on the bones, and most of these lay either on the skull or the os coxa, which is part of the hip bones.  We didn't have any trouble sexing either the skull or the os coxa.  The problem was that the hips were from a male and the skull was female.  So now we're confused.  We're not really sure whats up.  So, we go to the age profile, which Jeff has been carefully filling out, thinking it may be a juvenile female who hasn't yet had her plates fused.  Jeff says she's thirty to fifty.  Well.  That wasn't helpful.  After much debate, out team asked Heidi for assistance.  Turns out the whole skeleton was male, but he was from India.  This was one of those guys with really delicate features and probably really long eye lashes that all girls are jealous of.  This seems like it's gonna be a tough job.

Anyway, I spent some time after class figuring out how to print things.  I then went back to my room, at a PB and J, did the homework, and watched Dr. Who the rest of the evening.  It's exhausting.  The mystery girl has not yet been identified but is getting louder.