Tomorrow marks the end of the third week of classes and already a ton has happened to start the semester. Besides jumping straight into classes, there has been Epsilon Psi Epsilon (EΨE) rush week, our first day observing in clinic, and equipment ordering. It’s been a fast start and it’s already nearly February somehow.
Rush week for EΨE, the optometric professional fraternity here at Ohio State, was a ton of fun. All of us who decided to join got split into teams and sent on a scavenger hunt around school, campus, and Columbus. A handful of professors and staff around the college are a part of the scavenger hunt each year which just adds to the fun. The hunt was highly entertaining and a good chance to interact with some of my classmates I may not always get a chance to be around. I don’t want to spoil any of the good tasks but I’ll post a photo below of my group “finding the worst pair of glasses possible from the SVOSH room.” The best picture got bonus points too and I like to think we won those. Besides the scavenger hunt, pledge week also has other activities such as Games and Trivia night and Skit night, the latter of which is a night certainly not to be missed if you join EΨE.
As part of spring semester as a first year we get to observe in clinic under a third year student. Everyone has clinic every other week on the day you’re assigned and even after only being in clinic once I think it is a really neat experience. I really enjoyed being able to see some of the things we’ve been learning about in real patients. Textbooks and Powerpoints are great for the basic understanding but it becomes way more interesting to see it in real life and actually begin to apply the knowledge, albeit limited, we have as well as learn and see some new things. For example, when I was in clinic last week one of the patients we had came in for a follow up and he had a condition called Best Disease. Best is a form of macular dystrophy that usually has onset in childhood and can drastically affect visual acuity. I’ll put a picture I got off the internet below of what it looked like but what I saw was much worse with lots more pigmentation and scarring. It was really cool to see this and I’m already looking forward to clinic again next week to see what else comes in!
The other thing I really enjoyed about clinic was that even though I am three weeks into my second semester of optometry school, I was generally able to follow what the third year and attending were talking about. It really showed me how much I have learned already. It did, however, point out how much more I still have to learn. But seeing things like Best Disease and how, as an optometrist, we can help people with diseases like Best is really rewarding and motivating.
As if classes, clinic, and EΨE rush week hasn’t been enough, as a class we are right now going through the process of ordering our equipment. Thankfully at the beginning of the year we elect two equipment reps who do a lot of the legwork for everyone in class. They talk with company sales reps, coordinate lunches for companies to showcase and tell us about their equipment, and ultimately build an equipment bundle so all I have to do is basically choose from a few options and enter payment information. Kudos to them for making my life much easier. Although I won’t really know how to use any of it, I’m quite excited for March 27th, or as it was appropriately tagged by one of our equipment reps, “Optometry Christmas”, when all our equipment gets delivered to us! Ooo, shiny new things and bright lights to play with!
Finally, before school started this spring, a handful of us got in the winter spirit and went ice skating at the ice rink on campus. Here’s a picture from that night, with all of us standing even!
