Welp another semester in the books! And in about two years I will officially be an OD! After the the AOA Advocacy Conference, the semester was absolutely crazy! I first had my final proficiency of second year. This consisted of completing a full exam on one of our classmates in an hour and 45 minutes while being graded by a proctor. Because of all the practice we had gotten from our clinic skills assignments and the previous exams we had performed, I felt very confident in that I would do well. That is until I actually got to my proficiency. The gravity of the proficiency hit me while setting up my exam room and I had to fight through nerves throughout. Thankfully I passed that and all of my other finals! Therefore, I’m officially a third year!
Unfortunately this means summer classes too. Thankfully the classes will become more clinically focused and will cover different specialities within optometry such as contact lenses, pediatrics, neuro-optometry, binocular vision, and glaucoma.
Looking back to one year ago today, I received my white coat. It’s awe-inspiring to think of all the things I learned in the past year. Now my classmates have reached another milestone to complement our summer classes: starting our third year clinic rotations! Every semester each one of the third years will be in our Primary Vision Care (PVC) about 1-2 half days every semester. Everyone will also do a one semester stint in the Advanced Ocular Care (or disease) clinic and in the Eyewear Gallery. This semester I will just be in PVC. Like many of my fellow third years, my first day in PVC was a bit rocky. I had never done an eye exam by myself before so it was a lot to get used to. It also didn’t help that we had a tornado warning in the middle of my exam so we had to stop and take shelter in the basement of the building. Thankfully my patient was a good sport about the whole situation and I managed to finish the exam. Overall I’m excited to see many more patients and advance my clinical skills in the coming year.
I have my second day of PVC tomorrow. Here’s to hoping my exams tomorrow go smoothly and are tornado-free. Wish me luck!