"I think that the worst experience is dealing with the fat that you have to cut through," grimaces Munoz. Trying to clear it away from various organs, he says, was like "sticking your fingers through mush." It even dripped on his shoes, Munoz says.

Many students agree that the face is difficult. "That's the part of a person you identify with," says Ajeya P. Joshi. Some of the cadavers' facial expressions added to his uneasiness, Joshi says: "Some looked like they were pretty distressed."

Students are required to split the skull in half, an act which adds to their queasiness, says Sherleen Huang. "That's where I really felt like we were messing up his body," she says.

The genitalia are also disturbing reminders of the cadavers' humanity, students say. In addition, it's a challenging region of the body to work with: "It was so messy." says Mario A. Meallet.

It was "a reality check" to work on her cadaver once the group began examining the abdomen, Ogilvie says. "There was just cancer everywhere," she says. To look at certain organs, her group had to remove tumors. "To see...what caused this man's death was a draining experience, and hard," she says. "It was really up close--what cancer looks like, what death looks like."

In order to study the back of the body, students have to pick up the body and "flip it," says Sherleen Huang. The contact made her uncomfortable, she says: "it was like you're hugging the body."

But most students say that dissecting cadavers is ultimately a rewarding experience. "I love learning this stuff," says Meallet, though he adds, "but the formaldehyde stinks."

"It helped for getting a sense of where things are in the body," Ogilvie says. The cadavers are also valuable at an emotional level, she says. "Irrational thoughts disappear: 'what am I doing here, why am I cutting up a body'," she says.

Working so closely with the bodies reminds students that everyone dies eventually, says Elbert Huang. "It makes you think about becoming older. It's all about mortality, death, dying, getting sick."

And one of Goodenough's essays explains that the living students have more in common with their cadavers than they might think: "We see ourselves in these donors...We see our histories, our roots, and our futures, what we must become. The donors were what we are; they are what we will be."

At the end of the eight-week lab, students can choose to attend the Medical School's service honoring the donors. Sherleen Huang says that she is considering going to the service.

"I feel like this man really did give us something," she says. By attending the service, she explains, she would be "giving him something back. Basically, saying 'thank you.'"