First Entry: What is all of this?

Greetings,

Okay, so I did it. I finally decided to step into the blogging world. Why? Because I've been thinking about it for a while but never really had any ideas to blog about.

Well now, I have something (semi) interesting to blog about. In about a month and a half, I will be starting the next step of my educational career and begin grad school - optometry school, if you want to be even more specific. This will be an entirely different ball game, but I feel like it will be interesting to reflect back on in 5 to 10 years when it is all over.

So this is my first post, right? So this is where I'm supposed to say something witty and clever to make you (and whoever else decides to read this) keep coming back, right? Well...I'm still working on that.

No, in all honesty, I'm doing this to keep my family members and friends updated on what's happening in my life. And if you are neither of those, well then that's cool too.

But, since this IS my first entry, I may as well give it a topic (because topics aren't exactly my forte, so it might not happen again). So this entry's topic is: Why Optometry?

I'm glad you asked. Well for starters, I've been going to the optometrist at least once a year since I was in kindergarten. I remember being four or five years old and standing on one end of the living room and telling my parents that the numbers on the clock on the other end of the room were blurry (which I'm pretty sure they probably just thought I was making up to get glasses), but it was true. Probably around a quarter way into the school year (1997), all the kids had to do vision tests in the nurses office and I had a note sent home after mine was done.

Surprise Mom and Dad. Your daughter is actually having trouble seeing.

So that's where it started. I got my first pair of glasses. I wore them to school and got called four-eyes all week...which honestly didn't bother me for one of two reasons. 1: I thought they were so cool and was young enough to not care what they said or 2: I probably thought they were jealous of them...which they probably were.

From there on, my eyes got worse. In second grade, I had lined bifocals put on my glasses (I really don't remember the reason why). In third grade, we determined the bifocals weren't helping, so the bifocals came off. By fourth grade, my eyes were progressively getting A LOT worse - to the point where I got my first pair of gas permeable (hard) contact lenses that I started wearing full time. I had just turned nine years old.

By the time sixth grade rolled around, I was going to need soft contact lenses with all the sports I was playing and we found out that my eyes were still rapidly changing even with wearing the hard contact lenses. So...I switched to soft lenses full time and was SOOO much happier (if you've ever worn hard contacts out in the dusty country of Iowa, then you know why) My eyes still changed really fast. Every year I went to get a physical for school, they told me I needed to have my eyes checked when in reality, it had been LESS than a year since my last eye exam. Fortunately, I've always had access to contacts and glasses.

And that brings me to where I'm at now. I'm 21 (22 in a few months) and unless you've ever seen how thick my glasses are, you'd never have known I had any vision problems at all because I am basically required to wear my contacts full time (for things like driving and anything else requiring more than a 50 feet viewing distance).

For those of you that are familiar with how prescriptions work, this is my most recent one I received while still working at LensCrafters so I could get my new glasses.

	SPH	CYL	AXIS
OD	-15.50	-2.00	167
OS	-15.00	-2.00	008

OR, if we wanted to write in plus CYL form (or how ophthalmologists would write it)

	SPH	CYL	AXIS
OD	-17.50	+2.00	077
OS	-17.00	+2.00	098

And if any of that means nothing to you, basically I am very very near sighted (which means I can't see things far away) with a mild astigmatism (which is a fancy word for saying my eyes aren't perfectly round like a basketball). In order to see or read anything without glasses or contacts, it has to be around 6 cm in front of my eyes...which is what I calculated it out to back when I was learning optics in physics at U of A. So...that's no exaggeration. It's a legit number. 

Now, that you know my whole life story (not really), that is only part of the reason why I was interested in the field of optometry. After shadowing several different optometrists and seeing what the field has to offer, I became even more interested. And then after working at LensCrafters for a year and seeing first hand how great it is to help people out by clearing up their sight, I was very sure behind making my decision.

So that's how I ended up here. I will try to do weekly posts from now on (even though school doesn't start for another month and a half), but I figure I can come up with some other optometry/life related topics to talk about then. I'm pretty sure they won't be as long as this one.

Until then, have a good rest of your week :)

Optometry Fact (Basic, since I haven't learned much yet)
I have entitled the name of this blog Behind Blue, Myopic Eyes...for a couple of reasons.
1. Behind Blue Eyes is a good (and interesting) song
2. I literally do have really blue eyes
3. Myopic is a term that means nearsighted (which I am, as described above)
4. It works as the name of an optometry student blog...for now anyways... :)