So we learned how to flip each other's eyelids inside out...

Another week come and gone. And just another week until we get our second Christmas break. I'm already ready for it, haha.

My exam on Tuesday for basic sciences went fairly well, especially considering how hard it was. We had to know all of the muscles of the hand, the forearm, the upper arm, and the back including 4 different things about each muscle: the origin, the insertion, what nerve it is innervated by, and its action. So for example:

The Deltoid Muscle
It originates (where it starts) on the spine of the scapula (shoulder blade), the acromion (a part of the shoulder blade), and the lateral third of the clavicle (collar bone). It inserts into the deltoid tuberosity of the humerus. It is innervated by the axillary nerve. And it's action is to extend, flex, or abduct (move outward) the arm.

That's for one of the muscles. Did I mention there was a total of 47 of them we had to know for this test? Oh, and that only accounted for a little over 1/3 of our test. We were lectured on other material besides this that we were also accountable for. I think it's safe to say the majority of us would have rather been shot in the foot than study and take and pass this exam. It was rough. But hey! I passed and did okay, so I'm not complaining. We just have to retain that material for the next exam as well...Ugh

And I know, I'm in optometry school, right? So why do have to learn so much extraneous information that has nothing to do with the eye? We've all been asking ourselves the same thing. While one part of our boards are based on basic sciences, they will not be testing us to this detail. So...right now we're all kind of having to endure it and stick it out. If anything, we stay sane by venting to each other about it :)

On a more optometry related portion of optometry school...

Our optics class is really starting to pick up. Because we only have 3 hours of lecture a week, we are kind of forced to move really fast through the material to ensure we cover it all. Unfortunately, this means going over concepts I'm not quite able to grasp in class because of how fast we're going. I find myself having to figure stuff out later at home, when I'm going at my own pace. We already have our first midterm on Thursday morning at 7 AM for that class. So lots of studying for me in the next week between our two exams.

Methods was slightly terrifying today (see: title of this post), but still somewhat fun. We were still working on the slit lamp, but learning how to examine all the parts of the eyes including the eyelids, eyelashes, sclera (white part of the eye), and the conjunctiva (stuff that lines the inside of the lids and part of the sclera). But in order to examine all, we have to look underneath the eyelids as well. Not such a big deal for the bottom lid...you just kind of pull it down and push up. But for the upper eyelid...it requires you to flip the lids inside out to really be able to see that part of the conjunctiva. Here - have a picture.

Sorry to those of you that are squeamish about eye stuff. It honestly doesn't hurt...it just feels really strange. I think I was more scared to do it on someone though. I did manage to do it on 2 different people. It involves pulling their eyelashes out and using a cotton swab to kind of push the lid down to flip back up and over.

Apparently my eyes are extremely easy to do this on because of 2 reasons: 1) I have really big eyes and 2) I have really long eyelashes (good for grasping). So hey, whatever works.

We also learned how to measure the palpebral aperture of the eye, which is just the widest portion of the eye going up and down. Apparently I got pretty big readings (surprise, surprise). Because we're so used to classifying tests being normal or abnormal, one of my partners asked "...so are your eyes not normal if they're way bigger than what they're supposed to be?" I laughed.

Anyways, that was about it for school stuff. The dean of the optometry college had a big Christmas party over at his house last Saturday, which was super fun. Every inch of their huge house was decorated in Christmas decorations and they had tons of good food (and deserts). Here's some pictures from that.

Our Dean dressed as Santa :)

This ferris wheel was moving on their coffee table. Their house was beautiful.

And we took a class picture this morning while we were all in our scrubs. I liked it so much, I set it as our cover photo on facebook, but here's the full thing :)

And that's about it. Until next week! I'm excited for our break...

Back in the saddle and Busier than EVER! :)

Hello all! So, as you probably noticed, I took a break from blogging while we were on Thanksgiving break, (which was since November 6th). We were out a whole 3 and a half weeks and we just started back this Monday. It's a new quarter, new schedule, and just new everything pretty much. Lots going on and I'll be plenty busy this quarter until mid February or so.

So here we go! Here's a brief idea of what my schedule is like this quarter.

So...it's a little intense. We're taking about 25 credits this quarter and our BASI classes (all the blue ones) account for 15 of those alone. On top of that, I'm taking Ocular anatomy (lots of memorization), Geometric and Physical Optics (lots of math/physics), and our continued Clinical Service class and lab that I took last quarter. We also have more exams in these other classes and more practicals. The two weeks after we come back from Christmas break in a few weeks has four exams and two practicals alone. Which brings me to my next point.

We just started back, but we only have 2 more weeks until they let us off for Christmas and New Years, which is slightly exciting. We get the 21st of December off through the 2nd of January and then we have one day of class that Friday the 3rd before the weekend again. So if we can make it through these next few weeks, we get a short break again here soon. I'm more than okay with it.

This week definitely felt a little long (we have longer days now) and busy. We've already had an entire week of our BASI (basic science) lectures and have an exam this upcoming Tuesday again, as usual. We're starting to get into the anatomy systems more and more and actually Tuesday after our exam we have a 3 hour lab where we will be working on actual cadavers. This will be a first for me (I've only ever dissected a rabbit/frogs/etc. in college biology). I think I'll be okay, but it's more the smell of formaldehyde that bothers me and tends to give me a bad headache. So 3 hours of that should be great fun. 

This week we ended in our clinical services class and lab getting into the basics of the slit lamp (above). It's basically a glorified microscope that we can move around and see pretty minute details of the eye/lids/retina with a few different colored lights. My partner for lab today snapped this picture of my eye while she was practicing on me.

My iris up and close! 

We will be spending the next few weeks getting more familiar with this instrument since its a huge part of what we will be doing in the future, so for now we just barely got our feet wet today and learned what the different knobs and levers did and proper technique. The rest of the time today we spent doing full exams on our partners with the skills that we learned last quarter, so we can keep it fresh and because our instructor told us to. :)

And that was about it for this week. I rewarded myself with burger king chicken strips and a milkshake on my way home tonight after a long day/week at school (I know, healthy, right?) Which reminds me. Back a while ago I said I was going to be getting myself back into shape and working on losing some weight simultaneously (somewhere around mid September). Thus far I have lost a little over 12 pounds total, which I am pretty happy with considering I haven't done a whole lot different. That was just from running a few times a week and eating smaller portions of food. I stopped buying "junk" from the grocery store and stopped my soda drinking (almost entirely) and that's what's done it. I do occasionally allow myself a soda if I go out to eat with friends or family though, but that's about it. Before, I was drinking at least a couple every day.

So I'm happy with my progress AND I managed not to gain back anything while I was home over break and over Thanksgiving (which is an accomplishment...having all those good homemade meals that my Mom made :) ) And I'm still going at it, slowly but surely. Once I get into the swing of this quarter, I will probably work out a better exercise routine for myself so that I don't plateau at this weight  :P .

Until next week, that's about it! This weekend will be filled with studying and homework, and a little bit of extra sleep of course. I've slept probably around 12 hours total over the last 3 nights. Good times.

Hope you all have a wonderful next week!

P.S. Oh, and how could I forget? Here's my wonderful Christmas tree that is in my living room. :)

Decorating

Eyes a little crazy, but the tree is pretty at least! :)

Quarter in review

Friday afternoon! Oh where do I begin with the last couple weeks? Couple things went on that I didn't write about last week.

So my 5k was LAST Saturday that I ran. A few weeks prior I had seen that they were auditioning people to sing the national anthem for the event and thinking that sounded like fun, I recorded myself (I used to sing a lot for games back in high school) and I sent it in. Well about 3 days before Saturday, I got an e-mail back asking if I would sing. Haha, and so I did. It went pretty well. Although I hadn't done it in so long (and in front of a LOT of people) that I got pretty nervous. Then I ran the 5k.

It was a color run, so I got completely covered in colored corn-starch-based powder. While it was super fun, I don't think I will be doing any more. My lungs have been acting a little asthmatic lately to begin with and all that colored powder in the air aggravated everything. I was coughing the whole way driving home and still even when I got home, still found it a little hard to breathe! But it was still fun and I got to do it with a lot of my class mates.

Then this week was our last week of classes! Today we started with an in class lab exam where we had to watch around 11 different videos and analyze them and answer questions about each video. It was pretty tricky, especially since we could only watch each video twice with no repeats. The questions weren't exactly easy either, but I feel that it went OK for the most part.

Then our final lab proficiency was this afternoon. 10 of us come in at a time (we are assigned times) and are graded on how we perform each of the tests on a class mate that we had learned throughout the quarter. We had 20 minutes to do a case history on them, meaning introducing ourselves, asking them what they're seeing us for, their past medical history, blah blah blah. I didn't count, but I probably had around at least 30 different questions I had to remember to ask without having any paper to look off of.

I had to take the person's blood pressure (which is so great since we're all so nervous today and our BP is high), test their visual acuities (if they can see 20/20 or not) for far away and for up close. Then we had a special book with glasses that tests 3D vision, a few cover tests to determine how the person's eyes are aligned (which I think I described in my last post), a test to see how close we can bring a target to someone's face before it splits into two, testing the eye muscles and knowing what muscles are working where, testing visual fields (or the person's side vision), and finally testing pupils to look for appropriate constriction/dilation to light and no light and then measure the person's pupillary distance (or how far apart their eyes are). Alll of that in 20 minutes or less.

Mine actually went really well (my blood pressure was borderline Stage 1 hypertension because I was nervous today, haha). I'm almost positive I didn't miss any major points and was able to correctly identify almost everything. Such a relief to have it all done though!

So now! All that is left is 3 more finals next week: one Monday, one Tuesday, one Wednesday and then we are officially on break. I plan on heading back to Holbrook and spend some time with my parents as well as the dog and the cat :)

Last but not least, one of my classmates, who is now our historian, put this together for us. It has videos and pictures from the start of the quarter up until now of all of us. We all thought it was great! She only had it posted to facebook, so I screen captured it on my computer and added just a couple comments explaining some things in the video.

Enjoy!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMdqiAhAoeU&feature=youtu.be 

Is it time for our break yet?

Not a whole lot went on this week at school. We're down to only about a week and a half left of classes before finals start kicking in. Compared to other finals weeks I've had at U of A, this quarter's finals week really doesn't look too bad :)

After our test on bacteria/viruses/antibiotics on Tuesday (which went pretty well), I was pretty dead tired and went to bed early that day. I woke up the next morning (Wednesday) and felt like I caught some type of stomach bug, so I spent the majority of the day resting in bed and sipping clear fluids (I had no appetite all day).

Then Wednesday late afternoon I had to go take a 3 hour CPR training and certification class (that I had signed up for a few months ago) for school. I managed to make it and felt okay through almost all of it. They did make us do 6 full minutes of chest compressions to the beat of "Another one bites the dust"... haha. So if anything, keeping that up was a little tiresome.

I'm feeling much better now, but still very tired. And unfortunately I'll have to do a bit more studying this weekend to make up for all the class I had to miss. I guess these things happen though.

We studied vital signs in my methods lab and practiced taking everyone's blood pressure. My blood pressure had been a tad high a few months ago, but I'm pretty sure all the running I've been doing lately has brought it down to a relatively normal level, so that's good to know I'm doing something right. The weight loss is still going pretty well also. I backtracked a little when family was in town a few weeks ago (we went out to eat quite a few times), but I managed to get back where I was and am down a total of 7 pounds, which I'm still pretty happy with considering everything I'm trying to keep up with :)

And speaking of running, my 5K is coming up and is next Saturday. I didn't get a lot of running done this week with being sick and all, but I'm still looking forward to next weekend. Should be pretty fun since quite a few of my class mates are doing it as well.

And really...that's about it. Until next time, hope everyone has a good week! :)

Optometry Fact of the Week

Esophoria

In optometry, when we talk about "fusion", we're referring to how you just see one image even thought you're using two eyes. I'm sure most people have seen someone with a strabismus, or a "lazy eye", where one eye tends to turn in or out from the other, but there's also something called a "phoria" that most people have without realizing it (like me).

A phoria has to do with how our eye muscles work "naturally" and where our eyes naturally want to turn when they're not actively looking at something. Fusion is still possible (meaning anyone with a phoria won't see double), but when we just use one eye, the other eye will go to it's "happy place" and rest in its natural position. We detect this with an alternating "cover test" where we cover one eye and quickly uncover it and cover the other. In someone that has a phoria, the eye that was just uncovered will generally move either in or out a little bit to refocus on what they're looking at.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyIA-dl49Lg

This is a really good example of an "esophoria" (eso meaning inward). See how her eyes turn out a little whenever they're uncovered? Meaning her eyes naturally turn in when they are covered. (And actually, this girl has a tropia as well, meaning her left eye is like a "lazy eye")

Anyways! Esophoria is also what my eyes exhibit when only one of my eyes is covered. I'm only one of a few in my class. The rest are mostly exophoric (meaning their eyes naturally turn out) or they are orthophoric (meaning their eyes are aligned straight all the time). This isn't really a big deal or anything to be concerned about, but I find it interesting.

And I'm aware this is way more complex than what I usually talk about, but I find this stuff super interesting. And if I explain it out on here, it helps me study for my upcoming tests :)

White Coat Ceremony Shenanigans

Hey all, so I skipped blogging last week since my parents were in town and I was busy doing white coat ceremony stuff, but I am here now! And we only have 3 weeks left of this quarter before we get a little over 3 and a half weeks off for Thanksgiving!!! (Can you tell I'm excited?)

So yeah! Our white coat ceremony was a week ago today and what an awesome/fun experience it was. If you haven't heard of a white coat ceremony before, it's basically a small ceremony that schools will have for health-related professions to somewhat "signify" the student's transition into clinical practice (ya know, since lots of doctors wear white coats). So we all had our turn with our names being called to walk up on stage, have our coat put on us by the dean of the optometry college and some of the head faculty, and take lots of pictures with all of us wearing our snazzy white coats.

The entire Arizona College of Optometry Class of 2017

All of us getting our white coats!

So the picture above was put together by a brother of one my classmates who was kind enough to take pictures of ALL of us having our coats put on and then arrange it like this. We all thought (and still think) this is the coolest thing ever, especially since we're a relatively small class and are finally getting around to knowing everyone.

For my methods class, we had learned all about visual acuities and such (like if you can see 20/20 or not) and how to test for them. One of our assignments was to make our own visual acuity chart and bring them in the day of the white coat ceremony (we still had class that morning) so that we could hang them up in our lab so that all the parents/family could see them too. I decided on a music themed one, as seen below :)

"If music be the food of love play on" - William Shakespeare
20/20 (bottom) line: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do

This was kind of a fun assignment, but I decided to make it hard on myself apparently and draw out all the letters myself. All of the sizes had to be accurate for a proper test distance (like 20 feet away), so I was literally using a straight edge ruler drawing out every single letter both to measure it, and to get the lines as straight as possible. So that took some time, plus doing all the math for the sizes of the letters and doing calculations to figure out the "critical detail" of each letter, which is optometry talk for "1/5" of the letter size (like the arms on the I are 1/5 as tall as the entire I itself). But I thought it still came out well.

My parents were able to come down as well and got to see some of our cool classrooms with all our equipment as well (which I have several pictures of up on facebook).

But yeah! We are literally down to only 3 weeks left, which means my "finals week" starts 3 weeks from today with my proficiency practical in my methods class (doing all the eye tests in front of someone) so over these next few weeks I will probably be spending some time in our lab practicing on people to make sure I have our skills down. I can't believe how fast this is going.

Classes are still going well! I've taken another 3 exams since my last post (2 basic science tests, 1 methods/theory test) and I did really well on all of them. I think I've finally gotten my study system down and know what works/what doesn't work for me. 

Until next week!

Optometry Fact

Snellen Eye Chart

This is the typical "eye chart" you probably see somewhere when your vision needs to be tested. Basically, the way it works is the lowest line you can read from a certain calibrated distance is your "visual acuity". So if FELOPZD is the lowest line you can read, you have a 20/25 visual acuity. In layman's terms, what you can see from 20 feet away, other people with normal vision can see from 25 feet away...indicating your vision might be just a little bit worse than normal.

This isn't the exact science definition of what 20/20 or 20/30 means, but generally is what makes the most sense to people when we explain it. If you're REALLY curious to what they mean, you can ask me and I can give you all kinds of definitions and words to explain the laws behind it. But....it might be kind of boring :)

Half Way Done

Today's post will probably be pretty short. Not a whole lot happening and I have 2 tests this upcoming Monday and Tuesday that I need to start studying for in about an hour and not stoping until both my tests are done on Tuesday morning :)

This weeks basic science test went really well. Had I not changed one of my answers going back through my test, I would have had an A on it. The test covered multiple lectures about cancer, pediatric diseases, multiple different types of inheritance, analyzing genotypes, and newborn screening. I did spend a lot of time studying last weekend, so I'm glad it paid off.

My theories and methods class today learned a lot about using prisms and how to diagnose different types of eye misalignments - and using prisms to correct the alignment. It was super interesting especially after a year at LensCrafters and knowing why we were putting prisms in peoples glasses and why I had to make sure they measured as the doctor's prescription ordered. Super interesting stuff and it made the 5 hours we were in lecture and lab fly by.

We all got to pick up our white coats on Wednesday and NEXT Friday is our white coat ceremony. If you've never heard of a white coat ceremony, it's basically become one of those things many medically affiliated schools do for their students that kind of officially marks our transition to the clinical health science side of things. We have to look nice and our names get called, we walk across a stage and one of the optometry faculty puts a white coat on us. Nothing too big, but it's one of those "one time things" that we get to do.

Last week, my sweet little betta fish, Zeta, passed away. I'd had him almost 2 years, so he did pretty well for a little fish. Over a week later, it made me sad walking past his empty tank, so I went and picked up a new friend.

His name is Delta. I've owned Betta fish for a loooong time now and I have this thing where I always name them after a greek letter (since Beta is a greek letter itself). Coincidentally, delta (looks like a triangle) is also the same symbol for prism in optometry speak. So it was very appropriate to get him this week as we were learning about them.

And my brief blip on my getting in shape/weight loss thing is that it is still going well! I lost another 2 pounds since last week (5 pounds total) and I'm still running. I'm up to 2 miles and am able to run the majority of it. Still walking a little, but I'm gettin' there. :) I've stopped drinking soda and am eating smaller portions of food, which I think is also contributing.

Aaaand now I'm off to study. My optometry fact of the week will have to be about optometry using prisms and that prism is represented by the greek letter delta. See, ya learned a little, right? :) Have a good week!

Week 4: Mixing it Up

So...not a WHOLE lot to report this week. I'm finally getting into the swing of things and am starting to get my time management worked out as far as how much I need to be spending on various things for school.

So last weekend I was in Tucson and had soo so much fun. I stayed with one of my previous coworkers from LensCrafters Friday night. We ate food and watched movies and woke up a little early to go have breakfast at IHOP before she had to go to work. I spent a few hours at the Starbucks studying and enjoying my first pumpkin spice latte of the season and then went to visit some of my old coworkers, which was super fun seeing and talking to them all again. Then, Saturday night, about 15 U of A alumni joined the Symphonic Choir (my old choir) and sang the national anthem at the football game that night. I didn't stay for the game, but we did end up winning.

I stayed the night with one of my friends from choir that I had a ton of my undergrad classes with. We were up until the late hours of the night singing/guitar playing/ukulele playing and making videos. Here was one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTu80_OCWk

(I can't get the small video to embed here, so here's the link)

So...yeah, I had so much fun and it was honestly just a nice break. I probably didn't get as much studying in as I would have liked to, but it was most definitely worth it.

In the realm of our Basic Science classes, we have officially finished course 1501 and are onto 1502, so we've already gotten one of our final grades for the first course and from now on, any other grades won't be factored into that score. It's kind of nice to start with a fresh slate again. Still lots of material though. 

Today in our methods lecture/lab, we learned about eye movements, the eyes working together, and how your eyes accomodate  (which is what people start having trouble with once they hit about 40 :) and they need reading glasses). So we practice on each other, getting their visual accuities (like if they can see 20/20 or not), moving objects around and watching their eyes move, etc. and we had to practice documenting everything as well. Eventually, at the end of the quarter, we will have a practical where we will have to perform all of these things in front of professors on someone and will receive a grade, so at least we are getting plenty of people to practice on now. 

Oh, and another un-optometry related note (because I feel like if I put it here and people can read about it, I'll be more likely to stick with it), I am officially back into working on getting into shape and losing some weight at the same time. Right now I am trying to run at least 5 nights a week (I registered to do a 5K run at the end of October) and while I am still in my first week back to running, I can tell it won't take too long to get back to a point of feeling like I'm not going to die while doing so :) I even picked up a fancy schmancy(?) heart monitor watch that keeps track of my heart rate while exercising and calculates how many calories I've burned (based on age, weight, height) and my average heart rate over the entire workout. I had it up to 196 beats per minute last night on my run and supposedly my max is supposed to be 198 (220 - your age). 

Below are my "weight" jars. An idea I found on pinterest. Each pound represents a pebble. So once you've lost a pound, you can move a pebble from the "Pounds Left" to "Pounds Lost" jar. I thought it would be a neat visual for myself to see how much I've accomplished as well as be a reminder to keep going :)

I figure losing weight and getting into shape is never going to get easier, so I don't know why I've put it off for so long. So I'm going to do it the long way and do it right by eating better and exercising a little more. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Maybe every 3 weeks or so, I'll post a brief blip of how I'm doing and how much weight I've lost. My goal is to get back to at LEAST my pre-college weight (haha) and then a little more, so right now my total goal is to lose 40 pounds and I've lost 3 so far this week. So...so far so good. 

And as another (minor) incentive, I've decided once I've hit 20 pounds lost (half way), I'll get my hair cut. It's very very super long at the moment and probably needs something to be done with it soon. Here's some pictures in case you haven't seen me recently. 

 It's long, right?

ANYWAYS...that's it for now. Cue the optometry fact of the week.

OPTOMETRY FACT

Your eye is controlled by 6 muscles (SIX!) all attached to the eye. The names (if you care) of these muscles are the Superior Rectus, the Inferior Rectus, the Lateral Rectus, the Medial Rectus, the Superior oblique, and the Inferior Oblique. All of these muscles work together to produce different movements like moving the eye up or down, from side to side, or when they rotate in or out. 

We made "eye models" of the attached muscles today in lab. How cool are these? Haha. The pieces of tape represent all of the muscles. The fuzzy fiber sticking out of the back in the picture on the left is the optic nerve. The toothpicks just allow us to "grab" the eye and pull on one of the muscles to see what its action is (if it moves it up or down or to the side)

Almost 1/3 of the way through Quarter 1

Coming to the end of week 3 and still busy as ever! I'm actually writing this Thursday night as I will be driving down to Tucson Friday and will be down there the whole weekend, so I won't really have much of a chance to whip anything up.

Nothing super exciting happened this week. Monday we spent our two hour business management class editing each other's resumes, etc. Tuesday we had our second big test, which also happened to be my birthday. So that was super fun. My parents came down for the day so I got to hang out with them and they took me out to the Olive Garden for dinner and everything.

I had also put up a picture of the gift they brought me that my grandmother had given me on Facebook (which blew up with likes and comments), but I will go ahead and add it here again too with the description.

My grandmother put together this shadow box containing old pairs of prescription glasses that span over 7 generations in my family. Grandma, I was so touched when I opened this. I'm sure it will follow me wherever my job as an eye doctor takes me.  

The pair in the upper left hand corner was mygreat great great great grandmother's glasses from around the 1870s. There are glasses from my great great grandmother, my great great aunt, my great grandmother, my grandmother (who gave this to me), my mother (her glasses from high school) and finally the pair in the lower right hand corner are a pair of my old glasses from elementary school.

I may or may have not been singing Taylor Swift's "22" randomly throughout the day, because, well, I did indeed turn 22 this week. This probably also makes me one of the youngest in my class (if not close to the youngest), but hey, I've been used to that almost my entire life.

(Here's a youTube video for your listening pleasure)

This week's Basic Science material has been a lot easier to handle. We've been studying epithelium, connective tissues in general, and blood. Fortunately I've seen the majority of this stuff before, so it's not as overwhelming as last week's stuff was. But as usual, we already get to have another test next Tuesday.

And Friday (tomorrow/today), we will be learning about visual acuity in our methods lab, which I am actually super excited about as it's the first lab where we will be getting to work with our equipment and practicing with the eye charts.

Our professor has also requested that (if we wear them) we not wear our contact lenses to lab and instead wear our glasses. Which will be super fun for me (note: sarcasm). For those of you that haven't read my first post about why I wanted to get into optometry, I am very very (VERY) nearsighted, which means I can't see anything far away...and actually because of the severity of it, I can't see anything clearly beyond 6cm from my face (which is actually a legit optical calculation, not an estimation :P)

So you can probably imagine what my glasses look like. They're pretty thick (even with my 1.74 hi-index lenses, the thinnest plastic lenses you can get today on the market) and my vision becomes very minuscule because of the way the lenses work (i.e. my world shrinks to about 2/3 of its normal size, which kind of messes up my depth perception).

On a more fun note, as I mentioned before, I will be heading down to Tucson tomorrow for the weekend and am SUPER excited. My choir director of the last four years at U of A has invited the Symphonic Choir alumni to sing the national anthem at the UA vs Texas San Antonio football game this Saturday night. So, really wanting to see some of my old friends again, I jumped at the opportunity and will be staying with some friends this weekend. This probably also means I'll be doing nothing but studying Sunday and Monday, but I think its WELL worth the sacrifice.

And that's about it. Until next week!

Optometry Fact (Learned this week, was told about them at my last eye doctor appointment)
Hybrid Contact Lenses (I really want to try these)

Like normal contact lenses, these hybrid contact lenses are worn directly on the eye, but are slightly different then your "average" contact lens. The center of these lenses are made of a hard, gas-permeable material while the outside of the lens is similar to a soft contact lens, made of silicone hydrogel material.

The cool thing about gas perms (hard lenses, I wore them as a kid for 2 years and for about half a year last year) is that they give you very crisp and clear vision, more so than what a soft contact lens can give you. The only thing is, they are a little hard to get used to because of the hardness and having to get your eyelids "callused" and used to blinking over the small pieces of hard material.

But with THESE lenses, the outer material is basically like a soft lens...so you get the comfort of a soft lens and the visual clarity of a hard lens (from what I've read you still have to get used to them, but that time period is much much shorter)

I am required to get an eye exam by the end of the quarter at our Eye Institute (our clinic on campus) and really want to ask about these, since I know it's a specialty that they offer. I have no idea if they can be made in my prescription or not or if I'm a good candidate, but I just thought they sounded like a cool solution to my vision problems :)

Week 2 - Let the overwhelmingness begin

So, week 2 just finished a little while ago and we are already about 1/5th of the way through the quarter. It's flying by, but that sure doesn't mean that we aren't busy.

Our first exam was on Tuesday, and I'm happy to say that the studying I did pretty much all weekend and Monday paid off. Our exam was at 7 in the morning and we had to be there by 6:40 to start "checking in" to the testing center...which is basically just a big room with a couple hundred computers on desks with separators between each space (which is kind of nice...no one looking off your papers, no distractions if you keep your head down). Since I live about 10 miles away, I left pretty early so I could get there in plenty of time to still look over all my notes one last time, so I got there before 6. Ugh.

And if having a test at 7 in the morning wasn't bad enough, we started another unit in the same class the same day with 4 hours of class. All of us were pretty dead tired and starting new material right after was the last thing we wanted to do.

So now, Friday is here and we're all gearing up for our next exam that is on Tuesday again (these tests happen every week). This is our exam over Metabolism and supposedly one of the hardest from what we've heard from all the upperclassmen. So guess what I'll be doing all weekend? Not relaxing, I guess. However, the test is on the morning of my birthday, so I plan on taking that night off from any studying/homework/etc. and just enjoy it.

We've all been busy making ourselves "study aides" too to help with this exam. Here's my laminated "study" board I made last night.

This is our "metabolic map" where we have many of the reactions going on throughout the body with your metabolism. We will be given this on the exam, but what's missing are all the "enzymes" that take place of the little arrows between each thing. So I have dry erase markers to practice filling them in over and over so that part of it will at least be a little easier next week.

I think we're all a little overwhelmed with this material, mostly because we've never gone over this stuff in this much detail even in undergrad, and there's so much of it (13 lectures over 3 days time). I'm also definitely starting to feel that feeling I had when I first started at U of A.

You know how when you first start high school and realize how easy you had it in junior high? And then you get to the college level and realize that you really didn't have to do much in high school? Well, the same concept definitely applies here I think too. I feel like I didn't have to do half this much each week at U of A. Just with how often our tests are for this class, we are pretty much having to study every night of the week just to keep up.

It's definitely a change. It's a change I was expecting though. But I still feel that you can't quite imagine what it's like till you're actually experiencing it.

On a more optometry related note (not basic science classes), we did learn how to ask patients about their health histories, whether eye related or medical related information. So we all took turns being both the patient and the doctor today in our Methods lab. From knowing how to deal with super anxious patients to angry patients to super obnoxious/talkative patients. We got to watch some amusing videos and a few of my classmates that were randomly picked had to demonstrate what we learned with some of our third year TAs (teaching assistants) who were playing the part of one of the said patient case scenarios. It ended up being super hilarious to watch, but I'm just glad I wasn't one of the ones chosen, haha.

Aaaand, that's about it for this week. We were done by noon today, so I picked up some Subway on my way home (for my lunch and leftovers for dinner) and am about to dive into some study time.

And since I haven't changed out of my "attire" yet...here's a silly photo shoot.

Scrub a dub dub

My new running shoes! Since everyone wears the same thing, it's nice to have
shoes that stand out. 

And the sides. I love them. A lot.

Until next Friday, have a good week!

Optometry Fact: (I learned last week)

Retinoblastoma - Rb protein: The Rb protein functions as a tumor suppressor protein in the cell cycle - i.e. it keeps cells from replicating if there's something wrong with the cell, like a mutation.

So, children that present with a retinoblastoma (a malignant tumor growing in the back of their eye on the retina) most likely has something to do with a problem with that protein in their cells and so a cancerous tumor develops since there is no Rb protein (functioning properly anyways) to tell the cell to not duplicate (since cancers are basically uncontrolled cell growth). 

As seen above, the tumor can be seen with a camera flash or light and will give their pupil a whitish appearance.

First Week: Check

Okay. So...I'm just going to take a moment to sit here and breathe/think about all that happened this week.

WOW!

So, technically I'm not quite done with this week because we still have a case presentation to sit in on for our Basic Science class, or as most of the opto and dental students have been calling, BASI. But we were released early from our theories and methods lab almost an hour and a half early so I had some time to type some of this stuff up.

Okay, so...First day! All we had on Monday was our Optometric Business Management class for two hours, which I actually really enjoyed. We were required to purchase a 3" 3-ring binder with a multitude of tab dividers that will serve as our professional portfolio for the next 4+ years. Basically, it will be something portable that we can keep everything from our immunization records to anything else we could possibly need for practicing in other various states around the country. It was super interesting listening to everything we will be doing and so far it sounds like we will get a lot of valuable information during this class.

After that class, they had a ton of pizza for us to eat for lunch (they're REALLY good about feeding us here) while we listened to upperclassmen optometry students tell us about the several different optometry related clubs and organizations going on currently. Of course, ALL of them sound super exciting and I will most definitely try and find at least 1 or 2 to get involved in.

Our Tuesday through Thursday is where the bulk of our classes started to settle in. Just over the course of these 3 days, we had fourteen hour long lectures going over tons and tons of information. And the best part is...we already have a test over all of it this Tuesday right after labor day at 7 AM in the morning. I've been doing a couple hours of studying every night so far this week, but I think the majority of my "down-to-business" time will be this weekend. Fortunately, because of Labor Day, we have Monday off, so I will have all 3 days to get a lot of good study time in.

While there's a lot of info, I'm doing my best not to freak out too much because almost everything we have talked about so far I have at least covered once or twice in my physiology undergrad at U of A. So things from basic cell biology to a little more advanced biology to biochemistry will be covered on our Tuesday test. I'm hoping that helps, but I'll still have to devote a bit of time to get ALL of it down to where I'm comfortable explaining it.

All of the lectures have been presented with powerpoint slides (which most of us are pretty much used to). Just for this exam, there are a total of 373 slides between all the different lectures. Just in case you were wondering.

Friday (this morning) we had our first lecture for our Clinical Services - Theory and Methods, which our professor made interesting for us (i.e. playing music and YouTube videos for us throughout). We had to individually introduce ourselves and tell everyone where we were from, something interesting about ourselves, and end with an "optometry" word. I was one of the last to be called and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to come up with any more words since mine kept getting taken, but Fovea hadn't been used yet, so that ended up being mine.

This was my favorite of the videos, mainly because of how intense the music was. 

Right after, we headed on over to the lab for the first time, which has got to be the coolest lab I've ever been in. Upon walking in, you just see rows and rows of your typical "optometry patient" chairs with all of the typical optometry equipment by each of them, from the phoropter (the big binocular looking things most people associate with "Does it look better at 1 or 2?") to the slit lamps, which are the things you sit your chin in while the eye doctor takes a look at your eyes with various colored lights.

Today was mostly about exploring some of the equipment we'll be using this quarter (i.e. learning the names of them) and getting to know the rest of our class by having to do a "scavenger hunt". For example, we had to find a person who had the same color eyes, was born the same month, someone who played an instrument (since I had said music about my interesting fact before, my name got put down a lot on other people's papers) someone who had kids, etc. The hardest one was finding someone with a September birthday oddly enough. I finally found one other girl and weirdly enough our birthdays were the exact same day (September 10th...just over a week!)

And that's pretty much it! Our dress code is our galaxy blue scrubs or business causal (except for lab days which are only scrubs), so scrubs are literally what I've been wearing all week since we've been sitting in classrooms for hours and hours and I wanted to at least be comfortable while taking a plethora of notes and trying to pay attention.

First Day of School

So next week, just a 4 day week with our first test being bright and early on Tuesday morning (they told us they want us here by 6:40 AM), so that will be super fun.

I'm also going to try and start a short "optometry fact" at the end of each of my posts, whether its something I just learned or something I knew. Since I used the word "Fovea" for my optometry word, I will use that.

Optometry Fact
Fovea (n): A part of the eye located in the center of the macula region of the retina. This part of the eye is most responsible for our sharp central vision for doing things like reading, driving, or any other visually detailed activity.

Post-Orientation Post

Ok, ok, so sorry I missed my Friday window of opportunity to put up a post. So instead, I am sitting here on my last Saturday typing up a quick update of the past week shenanigans. So here we go.

ORIENTATION!

So on Tuesday, the day started off with making my way to the school (for the first time since my interview) at about 7:15 in the morning. It was pretty easy to find since all I had to do was pretty much follow all of the out of state cars.

Upon checking in, I was told to check in with the part of the admissions office (I'm assuming since they never officially checked off that I had completed my Bachelor's degree) and then they told me that they were still waiting on my transcripts from one of the Valley's community colleges here. I said that was interesting considering I'd never even attended there. Since that was a mistake, they opened up my transcripts on the computer and pretty much said "just kidding, you're free to go."

So I finished checking in, picked up orientation schedules, got a free flash drive, and had my picture taken for my student ID.

I wore a blazer (with jeans) and everything for this picture and you can't even tell under that pile of hair. Oh well.

The rest of the day consisted of them feeding us breakfast, sitting through lots of people explaining policies, etc. to us, them feeding us lunch, sitting through some more people talking, and then a break until 5 which is when we had our optometry school mixer and we finally got to really see who was all in our class (the Dental students and many of the other grad program's students were there as well...which mainly means there was just a lot of people there). They fed us again, we introduced ourselves, and then went on our merry way. 

Wednesday we showed up again in the morning and got to hear about every single class that we will be taking for the next four years...which wasn't intimidating or overwhelming at all (sarcasm). After that scary talk, they fed us more food (we got really spoiled here) and then got taken to a class room with EVERYONE'S equipment all laid out on the tables. We got called a few at a time and had to go through every single piece of our equipment and sign and initial that everything was accounted for (since we were paying over $4000 for everything). We then got our locker assignments and got to go home. I spent the rest of that night taking everything apart, exploring all the different tools, and even testing out my lens set and making my "approximate" prescription of glasses with the trial glasses. I was proud that I could pretty much see out of them.

On Thursday we pretty much spent wrapping up everything and listening to more people talk. They fed us one last time (sadly) and then we got to talk to a lot of second years and third year optometry students and ask them a many amount of questions about what to expect. As well as calm us down about it not being as hard as they were making it sound.

That concluded official orientation and we were done. Friday afternoon was when we had to come back to the school and pick up our new laptops that we had to purchase through the school. Each of us got a brand new MacBook Pro and had to install some software while we were there and then got to take them home.

Now...this is the first time I've ever owned or really used a Mac. I've used some of my friends' Macs before, but that mainly consisted of me trying to use it and asking them a lot of questions. So I spent a lot of yesterday and today trying to figure it out. But, since I'm writing this as we speak on it right now, I think it's safe to say that I am slowly figuring it out. 

And here we are at Saturday! I am successfully relaxing and trying to enjoy my last weekend of freedom because let's be honest, the next 10 weekends or so will be spent with lots of studying since we have weekly tests on Tuesdays. 

Which brings me to my last point. Technically our schedule changes a little each week, but for the most part, this is generally our schedule for the fall quarter. 

And on Monday we start. Lots of us will be sporting our Galaxy Blue scrubs on the first day of class. Or we could wear business casual clothes. Such a hard decision, right? I'm okay with wearing what feels like pajamas to school. :)

Next week I'll put up a quick post about the first week of classes. Until then, everyone else enjoy their week!

Back from my Hiatus

Okay, so I got a little behind the "every Friday" thing. Two weeks ago I was back from Iowa, but was in the process of moving my stuff into my new place and had no internet set up yet. One week ago I went camping with a bunch of my old high school friends and spent the day preparing and driving down there (which is a whole 'nother story itself...it was so fun). And today I am back at my new place and was able to get internet set up earlier in the week so...here I am.

In the realm of optometry school speak, I've been running around getting doctor's appointments done with before orientation. While I was at home, I visited my optometrist and got an updated contact lens prescription, went to the dentist and had my first ever cavity filled, and got a physical done specifically for school. I also had to go get a TB skin test (which I've never done before) and had to make sure all my immunizations were up to date...which I just got done today. My left arm is a little sore on account of the Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis) shot I got this afternoon.

I'll be spending the next few days unpacking (I'm procrastinating that) and organizing. This Tuesday our 3-day orientation starts all day and runs through Thursday. I'm getting super excited and nervous all at the same time, mostly because I'm starting all over again.

On an unrelated note, I did obtain a cute little pet this week. Her name is Tesla, after the physicist and the SI unit for measuring a magnetic field.

Tesla the Robo Dwarf Hamster

Next week I'll write all about the fun shenanigans that happened during optometry school orientation. :)

You might be in Iowa if...

So, if you read my last post (or you're on Facebook) you know I'm in Iowa visiting family and friends and will be here for the next week still.

So while I'm up here, I thought I would do more of a fun post instead of blabbing on about whatever is currently going on.

Instead, I will be kind of making a list of things I've seen in Iowa so far.

So here we go:

• If deer consistently want to jump out in front of your car whenever you go somewhere, you're probably in Iowa. 
• If you consistently see dead deer on the side of the road and it doesn't phase you, you're probably in Iowa. 
• If your grandmother has plenty of farm kittens running around the country house and they always seem to be multiplying, you're probably in Iowa. 
• If the raccoon family makes a daily appearance at the cat food bowl and stares at you through the window while they eat, you're probably in Iowa. 
• If your idea of a good time is spending the day at the county fair, you might be in Iowa. 
• If you enjoy watching people play real life bumper cars in the mud (demo derby), you might be in Iowa. 
• If you run out of the sun room so your grandpa can kill 4 or 5 wasps that made their way in there, you might be in Iowa. 
• If a lot of people give you the casual 2 finger wave while driving past them in the opposite direction on the county highways, you might be in Iowa. 
• If it's a common occurrence to get stuck behind a tractor on the highway for a few minutes, you might be in Iowa. 
• If you help cook and freeze 46 pints of sweet corn for your grandparents, you might be in Iowa. 
• If you're used to sweating after 10 minutes of being outside due to the humidity, you might be in Iowa. 
• If you see green EVERYWHERE, you might be in Iowa. 

I've been here for just over a week now and plan to be leaving next Wednesday. If I come up with any others, I will probably update this post.

Until then, have a good week :)

Before Arizona

This week, I'm writing from the great state of Iowa. I flew up here on Wednesday (which is a whole other story itself, since the first flight was delayed four hours and making me miss the second connecting flight) and got here about 5 in the afternoon. The last 20 minutes of the plane ride, I just spent watching out the window at all the green farm fields. It'd been 3 years since the last time I was up here.

For those that know me, you probably know I wasn't always an Arizona girl. Right before I started 7th grade, we found out that we'd be moving to Arizona for my dad's job so that he could work out of Winslow, Arizona. So midway through the school year, we moved in January of 2004. It was -4 degrees in the morning that we left with a -15 to -20 degree windchill. By the time we made it to Arizona the next day, they were having nice weather and it was somewhere in the 60s. That was probably the nicest part of the move.

I was born in Greenfield, Iowa and had lived in the same house ever since. We lived in a house out in the country 5 miles from town. We lived just a mile down the road from my grandparents (whose house I'm staying at now) and 3 quarters of a mile away from my uncle's and his family's house. We left lots of relatives (from both sides of the family) here in Iowa who are all still here, so its fun to come and visit for a few weeks every once in a while.

I think it was a hard move for all of us, but at the time, it was the best for my dad's job and allowed him to be home so we could see him a lot more. Regardless, it took probably over a year for me to get used to where we were. I'd been used to green and rolling hills all my life. I knew everyone in my class in Iowa as well as the rest of the whole school. So when I got picked up and moved to Arizona, the land was brown and had little vegetation and my school was 3 times the size of what I was used to (even though is still considered small by today's standards) and even to the day I graduated high school, I probably only knew the names of one tenth of the school.

I think a lot of it was culture shock. Once I finally got to high school and out of junior high, I was a lot happier in Arizona. Part of that was probably due to being a part of the several choirs and bands there and finally sort of having a "place" where I felt I belonged. I also really liked having all of the AP classes available and getting to know my classmates since we all tended to be in the same AP classes.

I guess to make this post "optometry" related, I will mention that the night I got here, my grandma mentioned she had an eye doctor appointment the next morning and wanted to know if I wanted to accompany her. Since she sees the same optometrist that I saw as a kid when I lived, here, I didn't hesitate to say yes.

So yesterday, I sat in on her appointment and got to talk to my old optometrist and had a lot of fun asking her questions after I'd told her what my plans were for the fall. Additionally, I even got to see my grandma's slight cataracts through the slit lamp as well as the optic nerves in the back of her eyes with another machine.

For now, I'm enjoying not having any responsibilities and seeing as many family members and people as I can up here in Iowa. Getting to see my old class mates and catch up is always fun too. Seeing as I have almost exactly a month left until orientation at my new school, I should probably use this time to relax as much as possible. :)

The night we got here, a mama raccoon and 2 of her half grown babies showed up to eat the cat food and food scraps in the back yard. We had fun watching them from her sun room windows. 

 

Previous Life as an Undergrad

So, seeing as I graduated two months ago (wow, that long already?), I thought I would talk about what I spent the last four years doing in school. Here we go.

For those of you that don't know, I did my undergrad at the University of Arizona, located in Tucson, for all four years. I received my Bachelor's of Science in Health Sciences with a major in Physiology - the only undergraduate major to be offered through U of A's College of Medicine. With that said, I had some pretty amazing professors...but the curriculum was no walk in the park.

2 semesters of calculus, 2 semesters of biology, 2 semesters of chemistry, 2 semesters of organic chemistry, 2 semesters of physics, 2 semesters of anatomy and physiology, 2 semesters of integrated cellular physiology...are you starting to get the picture? And there's more...but that's kind of boring to read through. (If you're really interested, here's a direct link to the PDF that has my entire major's curriculum:  http://physiology.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/psiocurric1213.pdf)

Now the way a lot of "medical profession" programs work (medical school, pharmacy school, dental school, optometry, etc.), you will generally have to complete some sort of bachelor's degree in order to apply. Generally, it doesn't really matter what your bachelor's degree is in, but they will most likely have a list of prerequisite courses that you need to have completed.

So basically...you can major in whatever you want, but you have to have those classes done by the time you apply. So...for those who know they want to go on to pursue that type of profession, they will get a bachelor's degree whose curriculum already contains many of the prerequisites to complete (killing 2 birds with 1 stone).

So for example...here is a screen shot of my school's prerequisites that I needed to have done.

Look familiar? The only courses that weren't included in my major were microbiology and statistics. Fortunately, I had already completed those my first two years when I was originally a pre-nursing major. So...that actually worked out pretty well.





The way all of my classes ran were pretty similar. With my major, the majority of my classes were all science classes with lots of memorization. We had a special website created by the school that allowed us to have a "webpage" for each specific class that we took. It was here that we could see announcements the teachers posted (such as a delay to an assignment due date), as well as download powerpoint lectures that the professors used in class (which is pretty much what all my professors used).

Here's a screenshot of my classes from the spring. Each blue link was for each class (labs included). I had four classes and two labs - each separated by what department they were in. This made is super easy to download a powerpoint to take notes on in class and then refer back to when I was studying for an exam.

Additionally, teachers could also post quizzes on this website that we would have to complete for a grade...usually with a deadline. So if you forgot about it, it wouldn't allow you to take it any longer. The same went for turning assignments or papers in. Each class had a "dropbox" that we would upload our papers to and then submit electronically. I think I only had a few classes where we actually had to turn paper copies of assignments into the teacher in the classroom. This way, less paper wasted and the computer could also screen any paper for plagiarism. Pretty handy.

So, after four years of that, here I am. I graduated and got to sit through a pretty awesome ceremony that the University put on for us.

Here's a youtube video of the finale :)

Left: The bracelets they gave to us that lit up about half way through that video.

Right: And one last piece of memorabilia that I created with my graduation cap. I think it turned out pretty good and I can't wait to hang it in my new place :)

I hope all of you had a good week! Next week, I will be in Iowa visiting family and friends, but I will try to write another post next Friday (for anyone who wants to read it).

Until then, have a good next week :)