On not studying

I am not a cheater. Not in the littlest sense. I play by the rules, and I mean, every one of them. (Ask Adam...I have the Settlers of Catan rulebook memorized.)

However, I'm not above a little copy and paste action, especially when it is relevant and I don't have time to conjure up the necessary cleverness to write a blog.

Hence, this evening's blog. If you haven't noticed (and by you, I mean the 7 wonderful peeps who follow my blog), I've been MIA recently. Most notably, it's due to the fact that I have 5 weeks of school left and 18 million things to do. No exaggeration, because I don't do that either. :-)

I'm in the process of studying for a huge anatomy test on Friday, and I went searching for a diagram of the brachial plexus. If you don't know what that is, don't worry. It's unimportant to the story here. What is important is that I found a wonderfully clever and well-written blog about studying anatomy. In fact, those exact words could have come right out of my own mouth. But they didn't. Some guy wrote a post a year ago and beat me to it. Enter copy and paste. I won't take credit for his words, but I will kinda pretend like they're my own. Cause after all, it's what I'm thinking anyways. So, CGHM, whoever you are, I give you full credit for the following words. Thanks for expressing my thoughts so I don't have to.

"Few ethical dilemmas are patently resolved. One such moral conundrum is the following: would it be unethical if, during an anatomy exam, you felt around your own body to determine the location of bony structures and muscle insertions? Taking this a step further, what if you incised your own skin to view the underlying muscles, vasculature, and nerves?

Granted, this would be a drastic action, and one that would more immediately conjure up the question of where to send someone who would do such a thing (the "crazy house" would probably be agreed upon). But one would have to feel some sort of emotion - not "respect," but something else - for the purported "cheater," even if just an acknowledgment of his ballsiness.

The body is a cheat sheet no man can take away. In my estimation, the man who would slice himself for this should be institutionalized, but not before he is given an honorary doctorate for doing all he can to further the pursuit of knowledge, even at his own expense.

It's just a grade, people...not worth losing blood over. Don't get any ideas."

Oh, and in case you are wondering, here's the brachial plexus.