When Anatomy Gets Personal

The day my students met the prostate

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

Staring out at a sea of nervous college students on the first day of class, I did my regular act of initiation.

“Ok, everyone, take out a blank piece of paper,” I instructed. “We’re going to have a pop quiz.”

Every semester, on the very first day of Anatomy and Physiology class, I gave my students the same pop quiz. You would’ve thought I’d announced a surprise root canal. But it was actually more for my own curiosity and enjoyment.

The room always looked the same. Some students sat confidently in the front few rows with pens and notebooks ready, eager to become nurses, physical therapists, physician assistants, or doctors. Others huddled in the back of the classroom with the unmistakable look of panicked students who were required to take a science class as part of their liberal arts education.

I stood at the front of the room and smiled in a way that made them immediately suspicious.

“Relax,” I said. “This quiz is only three questions.”

(That never helped.)

All students were instructed to write down their names and answer the following:

1. Do you have a prostate gland?
2. What does the prostate gland do?
3. Why is the prostate important?

Their response was always the same. Heads lowered. Eyebrows furrowed. Students glanced sideways at each other like they were trapped in a hostage negotiation. Occasionally, someone would quietly whisper, “Did she say prostrate gland, like lying on the floor?”

The answers were legendary.

One young man confidently wrote, “The prostate controls testosterone and probably memory.”

Another declared, “The prostate helps digestion.”

One woman wrote, “I think I have one, but I’m not sure where it is.”

A football player once stared at the paper for a full five minutes before finally writing, “I’ve heard of it on commercials.” And, honestly, that was one of the more accurate answers.

The organ nobody understood

Year after year, not once…not once…did I have a male student who could correctly explain what the prostate gland actually did. And only a handful of women answered correctly in all my years of teaching. Many women genuinely believed they had a prostate gland too.

I never mocked them for it. Truthfully, their ignorance fascinated me more than it frustrated me.

Because here was the strange contradiction: prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting men, yet most people knew almost nothing about the prostate itself.

According to the American Cancer Society, one in every eight men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. And having a father or brother with it more than doubles a man’s risk of developing it. One of my best friends died of it when he was only 39 years old.

How could something so medically significant remain such a mystery, especially to men?

After they handed in their papers, I took a few silent moments to read the answers as students anxiously watched my reactions.

Then I began my lecture. I had their attention.

“The prostate gland,” I explained, “is a walnut-sized gland located just below the bladder in males. Males only. It surrounds part of the urethra (the tube through which we urinate), and it produces fluid that nourishes and transports sperm.”

I watched faces slowly change from confusion to recognition. Anything involving sex always made students sit up a little straighter. Especially the young men.

There’s something about learning that a tiny gland can affect urination, sexual function, fertility, and cancer risk that gets a person’s attention in a hurry.

I explained how the prostate enlarges with age in many men. How difficulty urinating, weak urine flow, pelvic pain, or getting up ten times a night to use the bathroom are not just “getting older,” but signs that something may be wrong.

Then I talked to them about prostate cancer. The room always became quieter.

Some students had grandfathers battling it. Others had fathers who rarely talked about it. Occasionally, someone would look down suddenly, as though they had just remembered a family secret.

I explained the importance of screenings, early detection, and paying attention to symptoms. I talked about how men often avoid doctors out of embarrassment, fear, or stubbornness.

Then I opened the floor for questions. And without fail, students asked them. Good questions. Honest questions.

“Can they cure it?” “How do they know if it spreads?” “Does treatment change who you are?” “Can you still have sex if you have prostate cancer or if you have your prostate removed?”

I heard the worry behind every question, for I’d realized something over the years of teaching. People are often terrified of what they don’t understand. But they’re equally terrified of understanding too much.

Especially when it comes to the body.

Many times, after that first class ended, a student lingered behind while everyone else filed out, shuffling awkwardly up to my desk. “My dad has prostate cancer. I didn’t really understand what was happening until today.”

There it was. One of the main reasons I kept giving that silly little pop quiz.

Education isn’t merely memorizing body parts. It’s helping people connect knowledge to real life. Real fear. Real families. Real mortality.

We should all learn about the human body

We walk around inside these miraculous biological machines with astonishing confidence for people who barely know how they operate.

Most students can identify every feature on the newest iPhone, but can’t explain the organs keeping them alive. By the end of the semester, my goal was for them to know their anatomy as well as the passwords for their phone apps.

And maybe that’s why those first-day quizzes mattered so much to me. Not because I wanted to embarrass anyone. But because ignorance has consequences.

I once had a student laugh nervously and say, “I figured doctors would tell you if you needed to worry about it.”

I remember thinking how dangerous that assumption could be. Most of the time, the body whispers before it screams.

A little trouble urinating. A little discomfort. A little change.

The body is remarkably faithful that way. It sends signals constantly. The problem is we rarely listen until symptoms become impossible to ignore.

As the semesters rolled on, I noticed other things as well. The prostate lecture often opened a larger conversation about shame.

Why are people so uncomfortable discussing their bodies? Why do men avoid talking about symptoms? Why do women feel embarrassed asking questions? Why do families whisper the word cancer like it’s profane or evil?

The human body should inspire wonder, not humiliation.

I always told my students, “You can’t properly care for something you refuse to understand.”

That applies to more than anatomy. It applies to marriages. Mental health. Friendships. Faith. Aging. Life itself.

Ignoring reality never protects us from it.

Every year, without fail, after the prostate lecture ended, students suddenly became much more interested in anatomy. Funny how mortality sharpens attention — how making a situation personal helps one remember the details.

By mid-semester, some students would stop me before class to tell me about conversations they’d had with their fathers or grandfathers.

One young woman said, “I made my dad schedule a checkup after your lecture.”

Another student told me his grandfather finally admitted he’d been having symptoms for years.

Those moments meant more to me than exam scores ever could. Because education is not simply transferring information from one brain to another.

It’s about watching the light bulb turn on in the dark rooms of students’ minds.

And sometimes the smallest lessons become the most important. A walnut-sized gland. Three quiz questions. One awkward classroom.

And somewhere along the way during the semester, students learned something far bigger than pieces of anatomy. They learned that understanding the body is not something to fear.

It is something to respect. Because hidden inside every organ, every nerve, every fragile system quietly working beneath our skin, is a reminder that life itself is both delicate and astonishing.

And maybe that’s my real joy in teaching. Helping others realize how wonderfully and fearfully we’re made.