So, Friday. I'm not sure if I had previously mentioned the parent orientation muffins. If I had not, here’s what’s up. On Tuesday, upon going to class, we were greeted with two tables set up with any kind of muffin you could desire, coffee, juice, coffee cake, and other delicious things. Suffice to say, we gorged ourselves on free food. On Wednesday, the table wasn’t there. I was very sad, as was everyone else who had assumed this magical offering would be occurring every day. As the table wasn’t there Thursday, either, we all began o forget about those yummies and go back to eating regular breakfast. But, to our surprise and elation, the table was there Friday.
Jackie and I entered the building and were taken by surprise by the awesome. Of course, unable to contain herself, Jackie made this very clear with a loud proclamation: “OH EM GEEE! MUFFINS!!” That’s when the trouble began. A large woman with a mean face (I’m not sure if it was actually mean or if I just remember it as such) snapped at us and told us the muffins were only for the parents of orientation kid. Wow. Ok. We were just walking by to get to class because, turns out, the lab is past that table. But thanks for assuming, ma’am. Now, here is where I’m not sure if the chicken or the egg came first. What I mean by that is did we steal the muffins because there was a muffin monitor? Or was there a muffin monitor because we were stealing the muffins? Regardless, muffins were had by all. The next thing we know, there’s this poor orientation leader who has been tasked with muffin protection just sitting by the tables and telling everyone they can’t have muffins. We came up with several plans of attack. This first, obviously, was to send one of the women to flirt and distract. The second was to get Heidi, who looks older than the rest of us, to grab a few. The third was to blend into the crowd of parents one at a time. All three would have been successful, I'm sure. Only the third was implemented. Next time, muffin monitor. Next time.
The rest of the day was less eventful. As of Wednesday, I had been feeling pretty good. I had started to learn how to side all the bones and I had done pretty well on the quiz that day (33/30). Thursday was where it had started to go down hill when I realized that reading several articles for homework clearly was supposed to make us experts on taphonomic processes, which it clearly achieved when every single one of us estimated the time of death for the opossums drastically wrong. I digress. Friday was more of the same. I did rather poorly on a quiz because, as it turned out, we now needed to know EVERYTHING. All features on bones and all bones in the skull were fair game. We all panicked at open lab, and tried to learn the skull bones. Jackie picked up a bone I’d never seen before and asked Heidi what it was. Heidi replied it was a Palatine. Palatine? PALATINE? Seriously, what was a palatine? Emperor Palpatine? And it got worse. There a bone it your nose. And many others I didn’t know existed. The quiz went poorly for all.
Next, we all made coffee out of necessity. We had a guest speaker on fire. Turns out she was a fire fighter for like ever and now teaches other fire fighters and what not. Her lecture was less on fire and how to identify burnt remains and more about how to be a badass. Plus, her name was Veronica Mard, which is dangerously close to Veronica Mars. She was the one who explained to us, after being told about the muffin incident, that, as an officer of the law, stealing was never a thing. It’s appropriating. It was incredibly entertaining. Lunch then occurred, which was less than excellent but was sustenance, and more importantly, a break from the ridiculous. I ate Pho. It was gingery.
After lunch we had another guest speaker about grad school and how to apply to and get into a masters and PhD program. Basically, she scared the bageezies out of us all, and we al realized none of us are ready to be a real adult, including Natalie who is 32 and is already a real adult. Then the truly hard part of the day stared, and I realized that Thursday hadn’t just been an off day. All days would be hard from now on.
This consisted of a lab with six stations where we had to identify the trauma on the bones at the different stations. Keep in mind 1. We are graded for accuracy. 2. We only have an hour for the lab. 3. We have never discussed trauma, only read about it in homework. 4. Two of the skeletons were victims that were never identified because actual REAL forensic anthropologists couldn’t tell what was wrong. Jackie and I did alright. I could tell that one of the skulls had a bullet wound that entered on the top of the skull. When Heidi asked me to identify why that was the entrance wound and not the exit one, I pointed out all the beveling on the inside of the hole. She said good job and walked away. You know where I learned that? Bones. Thank you Bones. We also had to identify trauma on a burnt pig scapula and tell if it was fleshed or de-fleshed during the burning process, etc. The only reason Jackie and I knew anything about that was because we had all needed to research a certain kind of taphonomic process the day before and we had been assigned fire. Us for the win. Lastly, we had an hour long practice excavation which ended up being the twelve of us sitting around and joking and deciding we were going to make t-shirts declaring us the fellowship of the trowel. Yep.
The evening ended with Oliver and Laura deciding to throw a party. So. With plans for Saturday set, we all went our separate ways to do infinite homework and watch TV. I finished season two of Dr. Who.
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