i'm just going for it!

So I've decided to just jump headfirst into pursuing optometry, because it interests me, and it seems like a good job and career, and you can't really ask for much more in life. I'm taking an expensive OAT prep class right now and it's kind of stressful because I don't have a lot of outside study time available, but I'm trying to stay on top of it and I think it will definitely be worth it in the end.

My biggest fear right now is that after finally deciding that this is what I want to do with my life, and strongly pursuing it for months, that I'm going to get rejected from every school I apply to like I did for grad school. But I guess I shouldn't really think about that right now and I should just focus on doing the best I can.

In order to be more confident about my decision, I shadowed an optometrist in Thousand Oaks over my spring break, and it turned out to be a great opportunity. The optometrist, Dr. Tim Trinh, graduated from UCLA in 2003 and from UC Berkeley's optometry school in 2007 (which is where I most want to go right now) so he was a good source of information about the optometry school process. He was just an incredibly nice and honest man; he even took me out to lunch and paid for it! Since he just opened (or I guess re-opened since he bought it from someone else) his own private practice about six months ago, he gave me a lot of information about the business side of optometry, too.

It was a pretty busy day at his office, which only consists of him and his optician/receptionist/whatever-else-you-need-her-to-be woman, so I got to watch a variety of eye exams. The very first man that came in was probably around 70 years old and his English wasn't very good (I think he was some sort of eastern European) but he had his daughter with him who helped translate. The optometrist had this cool digital microscope so I could see what he was looking at on a computer screen. I got to see what a cataract looks like, and I got to hear Dr. Tim make his standard joke of "Having cataracts is good because it means that you have lived long enough to get them" (Ha Ha). I also got to see first-hand how optometry exams can be somewhat challenging when there is a language barrier. The optometrist would say the usual "Which one is better? One or two?" to which the patient would respond, "Two." Then he would say "Now which one is better, three or four?" and the patient would respond, "Two and four." The optometrist would try to explain that he should just say three or four now, but the patient didn't seem to get it. There was much back and forth of "Three or four?", "Two and four," "No, just three or four," "Two and four," until finally the patient's daughter translated as we all laughed and he finally seemed to get it.

I also quickly learned that giving eye exams to kids can be frustrating, as well. There were these two brothers who came in, ages 7 and 9, and both already had glasses so they were old pros at the eye exam. They didn't seem to have my childhood problem of saying absolutely nothing when the optometrist asked me to read the line of letters on the chart until she got so frustrated with me that she yelled "Just say something!" I guess I've always been a perfectionist, and I was afraid of getting any of the letters wrong! But anyway, these two boys did really well during the exam until it came to putting eye drops in the 7 year old to dilate his eyes. He was really frightened of it for some reason. I guess some people have a weird thing about their eyes (yes, Laura, I'm talking about you). I'm not sure if he was afraid it would hurt, but he was squirming out of the seat and moving his head around like crazy. I don't know how Dr. Tim managed to get the drops in his eyes (all three sets of them!) but somehow he did. I guess that'll be one thing that I'll have to learn how to do in optometry school.

The most interesting patient of the day was also the youngest: an 8 month old baby girl who had already been wearing glasses since she was only 4 months old. Her mom had noticed that she was developing a lazy eye and even though her pediatrician said it was fine, Dr. Tim told her to bring the baby in so he could check her out. It's actually pretty bad for a baby to have a lazy eye because the brain learns to ignore the information coming from that eye and that part of the brain won't develop properly, so even if the lazy eye is later corrected, the vision won't improve. So Dr. Tim did an objective eye exam and discovered that she was really farsighted, meaning she can't see near things. She was so farsighted that in order to see far things she had to turn her eyes inward (like we do when we focus on something close to our face). He gave her glasses to try to correct the lazy eye, but they hadn't fixed it, which is why the family was back the day I shadowed the optometrist. So now he has referred them to a pediatric ophthalmologist at UCLA to see if she needs surgery. It's rather sad for an infant to already be having eye problems, but hopefully they will get it all worked out and she will have a normal life!

I learned a lot of great things that I never knew about optometry in just 8 hours that day and I'm hopefully going to shadow him (or even get paid to work for him!) more this summer, so I'll get to learn even more. He's really happy and loves his job, and I'm excited to feel like that, too, one day!

So enough about optometry (Well, for now, since I'm sure I will talk about it a lot in the future). In other news, LAURA GOT ENGAGED! FINALLY! I am so freaking excited for her, it is not even funny! And they might get married in late summer, which means we (well I guess it is more of a "they" but I feel like I am involved. Haha!) get to start planning it now! Tomorrow I am driving up to SLO with her mom, and all of us plus James are going to tour a potential wedding venue and then go to a bridal fair on Sunday. Yay! I can't wait! I feel like I'm more excited about Laura's wedding than I would be about my own. But I guess only time will tell...

I'm off to get some studying done and then sleep so I can be ready to go in the morning. More on optometry, graduation, and my equally annoying and interesting comparative literature class later.