Before the dissection, I thought that I would be fine and wouldn’t be grossed out. When I walked into the room and saw the pigs, I got a little scared. But after I touched the heart a couple of times, I was fine and had a great time seeing and learning about the parts of the heart. When we were looking at an example of the porcine heart, I noticed that it was a light tan color because it was old. Then when I was looking in OneNote, the heart was a bright red or pink color because it still had the blood in it. Before the dissection, I wasn’t sure what color the heart would be and so when I first saw it, I was a little surprised. The most interesting part of the dissection was getting to probe around the heart and through the arteries. I thought that guessing where each artery or vein went and then identifying it was very interesting and fun. The most difficult part of the dissection was making the “windows” to look inside the left and right ventricles. It was very hard to cut with the scalpel and I didn’t want to cut too deep. I think that operating on a live human would be very hard and would take a lot of training. I don’t think I would be able to operate on a live human because I would be too scared to do something wrong and hurt the person. During the dissection, I learned that the pericardium in the sac that the heart sits in. Ms. McCoppin showed us a heart that still had parts of the pericardium attached to it. One thing I wish I had done was roll up my sleeves before the dissection because I had to keep asking people to help me. Also, it was a little hard for some of us to see what Ms. McCoppin was doing because we were on the sides of the table. I would like to learn more about blood clots and what how they are formed because we went only went over it very quickly.

-Aanya