According to Harvard Medical School’s Admissions department, “to study medicine at Harvard is to prepare to play a leading role” in the “quest to improve the human condition.”
It might also prepare you to play a giant spleen, as Richard Ngo, Class of 2016, does in this video for the Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s 107th Annual Second Year Show.
In this anatomical homage to “The Fox,” Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis’ deliberately bizarre hit, the Crimsonites demonstrate a pretty straightforward grasp of their studies:
Lungs go whoosh
Help you breathe
Kidneys filter
Make your pee
If, as they freely admit, they’re a bit murky on splenetic function, well, that’s why they’re at the top ranked medical school in the country, right? To learn?
And to dance?
Their parents, particularly the hard working immigrant ones, must have been so relieved to learn that music videos are a fallback should the doctor thing not work out.
Though why wouldn’t it? Secret male uterus? Vestigial fin? Possibly a backup tongue?
They may be guesses, but they’re educated guesses!
For comparison’s sake, here are two of the winning entries in the Medical and Dental School’s Organ Challenge, an anatomy-based music video contest for kids K-12: Oakland’s Pacific Boychoir Academy’s Miley Cyrus-inspired take on the Digestive System (above) and Poolesville, Maryland’s local high school’s “Happy”-flavored anthem to healthy cardiac function (below).
I’d say those kids stand a good chance of getting into Harvard.
(Don’t be embarrassed if you remain a bit shaky on what exactly the spleen’s there to do. This simple, non-musical primer on the “Queen of Clean,” compliments of I Heart Guts, should clear things up right away.
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Ayun Halliday is an author, homeschooler and the Chief Primatologist of The East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday
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