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.
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| 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.
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