Today we heard from current optometrist who have different specialties. Here are the minutes:

Dr. Flom and Dr. Earley

• Flom
  • Low vision rehab
  • 25 years
  • Johns Hopkins clinical research and UC Berkeley for Opt school
• Earley
  • Associate Dean for Academic affairs
  • Chair of admissions committee
  • Professor for 31 year here
  • Went to Opt school at OSU and did phD at OSU, undergrad at Northwestern
  • Specializes: pediatrics (started in peds), vision therapy, traumatic brain injury and neuro-optometry mostly now
• What makes up your specialty?
  • Recommends 6-9 months for first eye exam. For peds, have to like working with babies and have to like working objectively
  • Have to stay on top of the science in your specialty (ex: treatment of lazy eye) Have to make sure that you “change with the times”
  • Specialization is more common because the field of optometry is growing
  • Have to like a challenge to go into neuro
  • You have to like the patients you’re working with
  • Don’t let the challenge scare you though
  • Low vision:
    • Works with patient who are “partially sighted”
    • Have mild-moderate-severe visual impairment
    • Providing equipment, strategies, and devices for them to function at a higher level
    • Can’t really “correct” anything, but can help
    • Help get some independence
  • How is your speciality different day by day and from a regular optometrist
    • Binocular vision and vision therapy: there’s a lot of variety in the patients (ex: age)
      • Likes that most of his patients have already been seen before
      • See patients where “nothing more can be done”
      • Don’t see as much comp exams and contact lenses, it’s more challenging work
      • “The most challenging patients are the most satisfying”
    • Low vision
      • Really high stakes (will I ever be able to drive? Will I be able to read again?)
      • Special telescope glasses to help with night driving, can help see if you qualify for disability
      • Thrill of walking into an exam room and not knowing what you’re going to get
      • Have a national network and involvement in a national organization
    • Earley says opt is the best career in the world
    • What do you want out of your career?
      • Not going to be stressed all day long and want to prescribe glasses – great! Private practice is great
      • When you become a specialist, you’re going to see a lot more restrictive patients
        • Only the patients who need you are going to come see you. As a low vision specialist, you aren’t going to see patients who can see fine.
        • The more specialized you’re going, the more restrictive in the patients you see and it’s going to be more challenging
        • You’ll get a feeling for who you are and who you want to be as a doctor.
      • How did you decide on your specialty
        • Earley:
          • “I get to race kids down the hall. They wouldn’t like that at low vision”
          • Started out as pediatrician interest. Was in medical school to begin with but couldn’t have fun with medical side of pediatrics
          • Loves working with kids
        • Downside of your specialties
          • Earley
            • Allow of neuro complications. Come to you with the hope that you can help but you can’t always help
            • Have to work with them to “reset” their goals
            • Optometry with a heavy dose of psychology built in
          • Flom:
            • High pressure but can be done with support
            • Low vision devices aren’t covered by insurance – economic challenges
          • Legislative stuff
            • Ohio has great collaboration between the college, the state board, and the OOA/AOA
            • A lot of faculty are involved in legislative stuff so if you’re interested in trying to change something, there’s a lot of support in the faculty
            • We have to educate about optometry
            • You can write your senator or your congressman about scope expansion and encourage change
              • Listen to students more than they listen to doctor because you can always leave and form a practice elsewhere if things don’t change
            • Realeyes presentations
          • How does a specialty change your education
            • Doesn’t change your education at Ohio State
            • Smaller college and a lot of patients for every specialty.
            • Everyone rotates through every specialty to get experience
            • You don’t get to opt in or opt out of things, you get to learn everything about optometry. At OSU, doesn’t change your opt education
            • If you’re interested in specialties, go to into a residency – primarily ocular disease residencies
              • Gives you a one year focus on your specialty
              • Example: if you’re doing a peds residency, you’re just going to see peds patients
            • You don’t have to do a residency, you can just build up experience over time
            • In optometry, by definition there is no “specialization”
              • You can’t necessarily advertise yourself as a specialist
              • Controversial – becomes political when you start talking about specialization
              • Maybe this can become a legislative thing?
            • Academy of optometry has diplomate programs that help you become an “expert” in a specialty

Today we heard from a panel of current OSU Optometry students. Here are the minutes:

Students speaking:

• Rochelle
• Hanna
• Kinsley
• Abby
• Liz
• Madison
• Jaime
• Rami

• Working as a tech is beneficial but not completely necessary. You’ll do fine if you don’t work at a practice. Do shadow though
• Most beneficial things from working in a practice
  • Patient interaction
  • Will lead to good letters of recommendation
• How did they know they wanted to do opt without working as a tech
  • LOTS of shadowing in different offices
  • Good work/life balance
  • Not as much schooling as med school
• Optometry isn’t just “one or two” and prescribing glasses and contacts. “Can never really get bored”
  • Versatile
• Workload in undergrad vs opt school
  • A LOT
  • Will take some time to get used to
  • Not going to have as much free time
  • May have to change the way that you study
  • But it’s worth it and you can do it
  • A lot more material
• What did you do in undergrad that prepped you for opt
  • Well-rounded application
  • Leadership/club positions
  • Hobbies and interests
  • Being involved
• How did you get letters of Rec
  • Someone who knows you
  • Maybe a prof. of a smaller class size?
  • Pick someone that you shadowed a couple times or a prof that you had in class a couple times
• How did you write personal statement
  • Prob not stressed as much, but still make it good
  • Don’t let it overwhelm you
  • Start off with a story/values
  • Try to show that you researched the profession (more for the interview but still)
  • Brag about yourself without sounding cheesy
• Studying tips
  • Find what works best for you
  • One person may be able to re-read slides while another re-writes everything
  • Don’t let other’s ways of studying influence you
  • Don’t put a time on it – you’re just going to overwork or stress yourself out
  • Know when to take breaks
  • You’re learning to remember and apply not learning to memorize and pass a test
  • “6 hours of classes. If you try to do 1 hr per class, you’re at 12 hrs for the day, so just keep in mind it’s about efficiency” -Jaime
  • Every class has different requirements
  • Learn to recognize when you’re not being efficient
  • Engage with your learning
• Application/why OSU
  • Apply where you want to go
  • Offers in-state tuition after 1^st year
  • Get to see all specialties
  • You’re going to be well prepared
  • Learning to interact with patients in the first year by doing pretesting
  • The alumni always talk about how great OSU is and they still talk to classmates and professors
  • It’s a family
  • Apply places you can see yourself living for the next 4 years

Today we heard from Jen Bennett about the interviewing process! Here are the meeting notes:

Jen Bennett

Bennett.1075@osu.edu

• There’s no perfect candidate – bring your uniqueness to the table
• Don’t interview without practicing. Even 15-20 minutes of practicing can make a difference! It’ll make you more comfortable
• Look at interviewing as storytelling
  • You already have your own expertise (your own stories)
  • Leadership potential
  • Take a look at interview skills
  • Your empathy and exposure to diversity
  • Resiliency
  • USE EXPERIENCES TO DISPLAY COMPETENCY, SKILL, AND POTENTIAL
  • Self awareness
    • A source of confidence
    • Can talk about something that you know well
    • Get to know your accomplishments, missteps, your personality, your core values, your goals, your strengths and weaknesses, your competitive edge
    • Explore assessment tools to get to know yourself better or meet with a counselor
  • Stories bring specificity and they’re memorable/hold attention
  • List your experiences
    • Use your resume, mentoring, jobs, internships, hobbies, talents, research, etc.
  • Develop 6 basic stories
    • When you solved a problem
    • A time when you overcame a challenge
    • When you made a mistake (be selective)
    • When you were a leader (how did you impact others?)
    • When you worked with a team
    • When you did something interested
  • Crafting your stories
    • Highlight your advantage
    • Have a beginning/middle/end
    • Vary the setting
    • How you impacted the outcome
    • How you turned a negative into a positive
    • Some high school experiences are okay (like big moments) but try to have more recent examples
  • Practice telling your stories
    • To a friend, to yourself in the mirror, use a video
    • Create a cheat sheet to study and for your interview if you draw a blank
  • STAR Method to respond to interview questions
    • Formula for responding to behavioral interview questions – talking about yourself in action
    • “Tell me about a time when…” or “Give me an example of…”
    • Situation/Task
      • Describe the situation/task
      • Be specific
    • Action
    • Results Achieved
      • What happened, what did you accomplish, what did you learn, what changed
    • For narrative questions: create an elevator pitch
  • The “Performance” of interviewing
    • AVOID THESE ANSWERS
      • I’m a people person
      • I love working with people
      • I want to help people
      • I’m hardworking
      • I’m dedicated
      • I don’t quit
      • I’m passionate
      • I’m organized
    • ^ great things to say about yourself, but DESCRIBE how you’re hardworking/dedicated, how you work with people, etc.
    • Go deep
      • Don’t just report on your first bad grade, instead talk about your transformation into college
      • Apply reflection
    • Be yourself
    • Conduct a practice interview
    • Interviewing the interviewer
      • What do you need to know to make a school decision
      • Ask thoughtful questions and make them go deep
      • Ex:
        • How does your program define success
        • What differentiates you from others
        • How would you describe the culture of the program
        • What initiatives are you working on for the future
        • Who are your most successful alumni
      • Interviews are similar to auditions or performances
      • Practice feeling uncomfortable
      • Improv comedy exercises can help with flexibility and agility in delivering question responses
        • Flex your imagination
          • Take any object and demonstrate using it in a way that it’s not intended to be used
        • Harness the power of pretend
          • Talk about something that you don’t know anything about but practice being convincing
        • Yes…and…
          • Practice keeping a conversation going by using yes…and -accept and build from what is said by others
        • Your mission:
          • Build content for interview
          • Practice the delivery
          • Consider the pro tips