Posted by alexandra_k on July 30, 2014, at 19:17:30
In reply to Re: lab, posted by Partlycloudy on July 30, 2014, at 5:42:13
we had a little metal tray a bit bigger than a soap dish. to cut down on the amount of wax, i guess. and... a plastic box with scissors, forceps (too coarse) and a couple things that looked like compasses. needle ends. those and the pins were most useful for scraping the skin back, i think.
we were meant to hold it... snip the skin back with scissors and then pin it down. thinking now... probably the scissors had one blunt ended bit and one sharper ended bit. and i was using the wrong side... i sort of thought... what we would be doing would be a bit more like using a stanley knife... that the key would be to nick it under then slide it gently along under the skin... but it wasn't anything like that at all... i think i sort of mashed it up trying to pierce the skin in the first place :(
sorry worm :(
i did try my best :(
i guess it is a bit like cooking... chopping the vegetables... you can't use proper technique with unbalanced, blunt instruments... but proper equipment is expensive... and the idea seems to be... to keep things entertaining by keeping things at a fairly coarse grained level... so they don't want to instruct us particularly on technique... they don't have time, really... and things are overwhelming / overloading enough... hard to remember to turn the microscope off (keep the light down) so as not to fry the hydra...
and other people managed, so... i actually think i might have broken it when i was flattening / straightening it... i don't know... then the second one didn't have a saddle (was a baby?) so i don't know how much was there in the first place...
anyway...
i got more mileage out of using the pins to pull the skin back. one of the demonstrators was using the... compass looking things... to do that under the microscope... and there was a lot more there... i guess i'll try and use those more next time. and look at the scissors properly... i think i'll feel like a bit of a freak if i get my own kit since they don't say anything about our getting our own kit... but i think i'd really rather that... then (now this is going to sound odd...) i could practice using it on supermarket chickens, or something...
it's like how hairdressers are over their scissors. or chefs over their knifes... or olympic weightlifters over their barbells. the tools become... extensions of you. the end of your cane becomes your fingertips you want to wash your hands after poking something with a stick... and it takes time to learn motor control of a different... body.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1058481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20140718/msgs/1068991.html