How the Olympics Helped Me Pass Anatomy and Physiology

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In January 2002, I was in my second year of college. As a health major, one of my required courses was a 300 level biology class: Anatomy and Physiology. In all honesty, I really liked that class. The human body is super interesting to me, and poking around a cadaver is also really neat to see how the parts work together, and to see what my insides look like. (We had 2 cadavers, a man and a woman. However, the woman previously had a hysterectomy so it was missing the lady parts. Boo.) I also really liked the professor. She was originally from Estonia, and had been teaching/researching in the states for a number of years. What was really hard for  me, was remembering all the names of the different muscles, tendons, bones etc. Memorizing stuff like that isn't my strong suit. It also didn't help that the class met at 8:00 am twice a week.

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What also didn't help was a serious case of insomnia I was dealing with. As much as I wanted to, I just couldn't get to sleep before 4 am most nights. 4am bed time+ 8:00 super hard class= no bueno.


The Winter games of 2002 were held in Salt Lake City. Being in Oregon, that meant most of the coverage was live, or pretty close to it. Not like this year where I have to avoid certain web sites so I don't see any spoilers.

Actually this one isn't as bad as my home town newspaper that shows the headlines of who won what race. Like the 400 IM with Phelps and Lochte. Grr.

Anyway, like I was saying, in 2002, most of the coverage was live, however some of events just don't get prime time coverage (or even day time coverage), and they get replayed at 2 or 3 in the morning. In the summer we are looking at events like cycling, badminton, race walking, shooting, etc. In the winter, the events you see in the middle of the night usually involve cross country skiing or shooting or a combination of those two events.

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Being that I wasn't sleeping anyway, I stayed up and watched a ton of these events. Estonia happened to be very good at these sorts of things. One morning after watching Estonia win the gold in some sort of skiing and shooting competition, I went up to my professor before class and mentioned how good Estonia was doing in the Olympics and that I had watched the big win. She said that she had stayed up to watch it as well. After that, the class didn't get easier, but she knew me, and always said "hello" after that. At the end of the term, I was confused as to why I had gotten the C that was on my grades, and I went to talk to her. She looked back at her records, and saw her mistake, and I was actually supposed to get a B-. As she was filling out the grade change form, she decided to make it a B+ for my troubles. I also believe it was because I watched Estonia in the Olympics that year.

Have the Olympics ever helped you out? Do you watch the middle of the night events?