Opt2 Part 2

Winter break was a much needed change of pace from the juggling act that is life as an optometry student. I happily spent large portions of my break snuggled up with my dog, reading for fun/not for school, watching movies, and spending time back at home with my family. My goal was to hibernate as much as humanly possible. As happy as I am to be back with all of my optometry friends, it was hard to get back into the school routine.

But somehow 3 weeks of the semester have already flown by and I am finally getting back into the swing of things. I am learning new clinical skills in lab that build upon the skills we learned last semester, and I am enjoying the time spent with my classmates practicing together outside of class. I also have a new set of courses this semester, such as retinal disease, ocular pharmacology, and visual neuro (among others).

The coming week is particularly exciting for my class because we get to perform our first comprehensive eye exam on our own patients for the first time! It is especially meaningful because we all get to invite our friends and family members to sit as our patients throughout the semester. This term of OptII clinic is helping us fuse our classroom knowledge and clinical skill set to prepare to perform exams in all of the different OSU optometry clinic services starting our third year. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t a bit nervous to take this next step in my clinical education, but overall I am excited to work and learn my way through the unknown and grow as both a future optometrist and as a person.