Worse? That’d be so cool, of course we didn’t dissect anything in school, that’d be too much, but in the university we cut a rat, quail and frogs, rat muscles are amazingly complicated, took me a lot to name all of them (others simplified the head when they were drawing), lots of google searches for muscles’ names.
It would have been well deserve as well 
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I think both have merits - getting outside for that sort of science, and dissection both.
I really enjoyed the dissection (high school biology we did a frog, senior year I opted for anatomy & physiology elective and we did fetal pig & cat). It prepped me really well for what I went into eventually - in grad school I was literally doing neurosurgery on mice and rats. Then again I went to grad school at a med school and we also worked with cadavers. I find it fascinating. I’m a hands-on learner so it worked great for me. I was in uni on the cusp of using the Internet for things, and a genetics lab played with online-lab modules rather than hands-on. I’m sure stuff has gotten better, but it was not great and much harder to learn. I feel like hands-on skills just aren’t done much, probably less now than when I was in school. Whether that be outside looking at things to ID or in the lab dissection or whatever else, the doing is what I think is important.
The only thing I wish is that I was ‘allowed’ to do field work back then…I went the lab route back then because it was encouraged to instead of field work, not because it was my true desire, it was just a back-up idea. I never understood why until recently my partner explained that it was ok to be in the lab - still hidden behind closed doors then - but women/queer in field work? definitely not. (to be clear: not their views - just how it was for me thanks to the others around me) I hope times have gotten better for the kids in school these days so they aren’t pushed based on their looks on what they should do. As far as that goes, I definitely would have a different career path if I wasn’t pushed away from the natural sciences.
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Me too. Earthworms in saline solution. Till the salt was concentrated enough to tie the earthworm in a death knot.
Zoology lost me.
I want my creatures live in nature. Or dead because they were part of the cycle of life.
iNat suits my interests.
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Hear, hear!
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Contrary to the experience here the earthworm is actually one of the dissections I had in my zoology class last year I remember liking the most. I remember being particularly fascinated by an optional aside where the guide suggested making a squash mount of some of the seminal vesicle contents and observing the parasitic Monocystis gregarines inside. Apparently almost all earthworms have these and quite a few species are involved which I, perhaps rather weirdly thought was an amazing bit of biodiversity (if anyone is chasing high-level iNat firsts the whole Family currently has 0 obs).
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That’s really interesting diversity!
The gears in my head are turning…
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