embryology

I have four or five half-done entries saved here. Despite doing nothing of importance over the past month (actually, probably because) I have a lot of stray thoughts I wanted to aggregate here. Instead of finishing them, I've been studying or rather, thinking about how I should study.

For example, I'm supposed to learn some embryology. In theory, embryology--to learn how we grow from one cell to what we are--is pretty awesome. But because we never learned it in school as a complete concept, because I'm bad at spatial visualization, because I learn slowly and need countless repetition, and because we're required to know a smattering of facts to which I thus have to allocate my limited mental space and energy, I can't describe to you this process or even really feel its core substance, the stuff that's supposed to come before the fray details.

Instead, I know which parts of the body arise from the neural crest: autonomic nervous system (ANS), dorsal root ganglion, melanocytes, chromaffin cells of adrenal medulla, enterochromaffin cells, pia and arachnoid, celiac ganglion, Schwann cells, odontoblasts, parafollicular C cells of thyroid, laryngeal cartilage, bones of the skull.

I came up with this crude (as in unadorned) story to remember: Aunts (ANS) are my roots (dorsal root/as in my ancestry), but why do I have more melanocytes (if you know me in real life you know I'm much darker than my family)? They (the color) come from chromaffin cells (which stain brown) and enterochromaffin cells. But if you peel off the layers (pia and arachnoid, layers overlying the brain), you find we're still a steely gang (celiac ganglion). We'll go on Swan boats (Schwann cells; my relatives in Vietnam took me on a Swan boat last summer), and have a blast (odontoblast), go parachuting (parafollicular cells; I like hot air balloons and parachutes seemed close enough), and scream (laryngeal cartilage) for fear of breaking our skulls (...skull bones).

I like science and I like stories. But if you multiply the above information by say, ten thousand, that might estimate what we're supposed to know. So if I come up with ten thousand semi-sensible stories for these lists, and then remember them, I might know what I need to know for the Boards. In conclusion I would just like to say...wtf.

Of course science is founded upon inherent stories that exist outside my unimaginative imagination, and we're supposed to know a lot of that too. Still, at this point in our education there are many things whose structures are too enmeshed in mere fact and jargon to see, at least for someone like me who needs a fair amount of time and struggle to understand. It's the embryological state I would really like to understand, and to see through to completion. Like my fragments of entries.