The semester continues to move quickly and it’s hard to realize we’re essentially half of the way through it. Another round of midterms started this week and I’m writing this as a study break from our pharmacology midterm and retinoscopy practical next week.
A couple weeks ago I got the chance to go to a more regional conference, called East West, that is put on by the Ohio Optometric Association. Again this year the conference was held in Cleveland which is really convenient to get to from Columbus so a lot of my classmates and students from the class above us all went. Similar to the American Optometric Association conference I went to back in June, East West has a lot of continuing education talks, a vendor exhibit hall, and opportunities to meet and mingle with optometrist from around the greater Ohio region.
Something that I really enjoyed about East West was that they have developed a couple student-only workshops for all of us who attend. This year they had one on dry eye and a second on glaucoma. The dry eye workshop I found especially interesting because we were able to see actual dry eye patients and examine them. Earlier in the week we had a lecture on dry eye so it was all very fresh and combining that will all the clinical techniques we’ve been learning made the whole experience really awesome. It was cool to have a day where everything started coming together and remind me that all the hours I spend studying are worth it.
Of course though, no optometry conference isn’t complete without a large social function. This year again, the conference had a party on Friday night at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bad Habits, the optometry rock band I’ve talked about before, headlined the event. The rock hall itself was entirely open so we were able to browse around some of the exhibits as well. It’s a really cool event so look into going to East West next October. Here’s a few pictures from the night at the rock hall.
Going to Cleveland for the conference also gave me a chance to go home for a night and see my parents. And being the baseball family we are, we couldn’t turn down an opportunity to go see a game, especially with the Minnesota Twins (the family team) in town and in a race to make the playoffs. We were able to witness a great game and Twins victory but unfortunately they fell short of making the playoff. A good year though.
Alright, back to pharmacology and retinoscopy!