My Fascination With the Human Body

Picture of the male human body.
 Courtesy from Steve Jurvetson

Since I have taken particular science classes during high school, human anatomy has become one of my favorite subjects to learn about. Although I am a Microbiology major at San Francisco State University (SFSU), I still love learning about how each part of our body works and how it keeps our body, as a whole, functioning.      

            The beginning of where this all started was back in high school. Biology was one science course that students were required to take. Although I enjoy learning about the human anatomy, my high school biology class was not the starting point.

            In my school, there is a program called the Health Pathway, which consists of a two-year program, and was also the starting point of when my interest in human anatomy began.. The first year of the program, which you enter when you are in 11th grade, is a course in physiology, where students are taught how the human body works. The second year is a course called Introductions to Biotechnology, where students learn about how the biotech industry work in labs and the lab skills associated with it.

            Both classes were really fun and enjoyable. In Physiology, we learned about different systems in our body, such as how the brain works, the muscular and skeletal system, and how blood flows through the body. During Intro to Biotechnology, we learned about different lab skills, like testing DNA for various reasons and inserting genes into the DNA of microorganisms to produce things like insulin.

            During my time in the first year of the program, an opportunity came from City College of San Francisco (CCSF). We were able to take a course at one of the CCSF campuses, while also attending high school, and also obtain college credit. This course was called HIT 50A, or Medical Terminology.

            This class helped me further my interest in human anatomy. In that class, we learned about the medical lingo, and how to deconstruct the medical terms to understand what it means, such as "enteritis", which means an inflammation in the small intestine. Along with learning about the medical lingo, the professor also had us learn about different systems, such as the circulatory, digestive, and the reproductive system.

            With the knowledge and experience I've gained from high school and the college course, I have really taken a liking to the human anatomy because it is fascinating, like space; people do not know much about it unless we take the time to learn what is there . It is surprising how the different parts of our body function every minute and every day of our lives, yet, we do not really think about or realize what is going on inside.

 Furthermore, if we knew more about how our body functions, we could make smarter decisions with helping our society by spreading our knowledge and donating parts of our body to people who need organ and/or tissue transplants.

Now that you've gotten to know me a little better and why human anatomy fascinates me, I hope you will learn and spread this knowledge for others to know. Are there any parts of the human body you like, or would like to know more about?