Reproduction in Humans

Human reproduction is not something new to us. Having learnt it in primary school before, we had some background knowledge of it already. This time, things got a little more detailed, and the introduction of the menstrual cycle was the troublesome one.

Most of us leave primary school with a very vague idea of the menstrual cycle. All we knew was that sanitary pads need to be used, and that was more or less on what we knew. However, by adding the hormone level, it made the entire topic seemed rather confusing.

This was not the first time I was confused by the menstrual cycle. While reading What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell, unexpectedly, there was a chapter on the menstrual cycle. The chapter was titled “John Rock’s error: What the co-inventor of the Pill didn't know about menstruation can endanger women's health”. The chapter spent a fair share of time explaining about the cycle, the effect the pill has on women. While things were detailed, I could not understand a single thing. The nature of the topic was rather complicated. Well, I decided to move on and continue reading as there were other chapters that are less complicated, easier to understand.

When I was first handed the notes on human reproduction which contained the part on menstrual cycle, I was rather puzzled with it. As it was approaching the end of term, I did not clarify my doubts with anyone.

It was only one day before the Term 3 test that I started reading the notes (I was busy for the whole week due to council as well as other things) and looked at the menstrual cycle in detail. To be honest, it wasn’t that hard after all. Just required some detailed reading and understanding.

Moral of the story? Some things may be easier than they may initially seem, so do not cast any doubts on yourself even before doing it. I realize that at some point of time I was trying to escape from reality, I was telling myself it was hard to understand so don’t be too hard on trying. However, tests can be a great motivation. In the end, I managed to understand the notes.

You never try, you never know…