A typical year in UCD consists of taking 10-11 classes, and then being allowed to take 1-2 classes of your choosing (or electives) under UCD Horizons. In fact, one of the persuading factors to go to UCD for me was UCD Horizons and I had planned to take full advantage of the programme. Throughout my Animal Science degree, I took electives in Forensic Anthropology, German, Psychology, and in my final years, I took advanced modules in the animal sciences.
My all time favourite elective was an introduction to forensic anthropology, and while it seems like a bizarre option for an animal science student, I was at the time really into the show ‘Bones’ and even considered studying anthropology at college level.
Introduction to Forensic Anthropology is one of the modules from the School of Medicine and can be taken by anyone in UCD. It was a normal 12 weeks module consisting of lectures once a week and some lab work in the state of the art anatomy dissection room. There was quite a bit of learning involved – but looking back on it now, it wasn’t that bad. The majority of the class were 1st year medical students, 1st year science students and a small collection of students from all over the university.
We had to learn all the bones – not just the names but identifying features on each and how to tell which side was the left or right, as well as identifying sex and age. We learnt about the evolution of man from the very first ancestor to the modern Homo sapien. As part of studying mankind’s evolution we got to examine skulls of early hominids. This included a look at a skull of the earliest known hominid Homo habilis, who lived 2.3 million years ago as well as Homo erectus and Homo ergaster, who are thought to be the first hominids to use fire and tools.
We had guest lecturers who talked us through what happens when remains are found, and on the legal side of forensics. The lectures were really engaging and I was really glad to have picked an elective that was so different, and so fun from my core animal science classes.
As part of the module we had a practical exam where we had to identify various bones and also a group assignment. We were given a near complete skeleton and we had to decipher if it was male or female, the age and then match it to a list of possible individuals. The practical exam was really fun, especially the group work. The students in my group were really nice, and it was my first exposure to how group work brings the best of everyone together to solve a problem.
I’d definitely recommend everyone who comes to UCD to try out an elective outside of their core classes. While it’s really good to delve deeper into your course, it’s also really good to study something just because its fun, or because you’ve always wanted to try it! You’ll meet loads of new friends along the way as well. And while this elective seemed like a bizarre choice at the time – it turns out that the bone names are the same across the species, which came in very handy for my anatomy modules in Vet-Med.
