AOA Annual summer meeting (Boston 2016)

This past summer, I went to my first major optometry conference as an optometry conference. Every year in the summer months, the American Optometric Association hosts a national meeting. In 2016, it was held at Boston, so me and some optometry friends went there this past July 2016. Here are some clips of what we did! It's expensive to attend a conference because depending on what school you go to, most schools don't give you a stipend to attend a conference as a student. There is usually a registration fee (ranging from $50-100, which is a good deal because as an OD, I hear you pay around $300 per day of conference, at least for the bigger conferences). However, if you look out for smaller conferences in your area, there may be cheaper, smaller scale conferences to go to on the weekend for the networking experiences.

At the conference, you can attend as much Continuing education events as you want and get to meet other practicing optometrists and get a feel for what your future will be like. The conferences also have networking events, lunches, and dinners to meet other optometrists and optometry students around the nation. Sometimes groups at the conference will also host evening socials which are fun to attend to. And of course, being in Boston for the first time, I had to explore the city~~

Wednesday 6.29
Cafe
dinner- Giarcoma (lobster dinner in Boston)

Thurs: 6.30
attend CE event at convention in the morning
Boston Tea Party
Bon mi restaurant
evening- quiz bowl event. This is a student event held annually with AOA. It's a great way for students from optometry schools in U.S. and Canada to cheer on their fellow classmate as they complete in "Student Bowl", which is basically an optometry trivia competition. We get to learn and refresh some optometry facts and "trivia", as well as mingle and network with other students.
After part/social at Hard Rock and bar .

Friday: 7.1
CE event in the morning
James Hook - Lobster rolls for lunch
Attend the residency forum at conference
Walmart reception and ICO reception inside Westin Hotel
attend the after party luxoticca live at royale and after party with other optometry students

-AOA also hosts an after social after the student bowl. This year it was at Hard Rock cafe/bar in Boston. It was cool because it was a silent disco so we were all given headphones to wear, with 3 different types of music to listen to. So when we put the headphones on, everyone can jam to the music of their liking. At the same time, if you wanted to be social and talk to other people, you can take off the headphones and still be able to hear people.

Sat: 7.2
Bee Hive- brunch
Newbury street shopping
Attend scleral event at conference at 3:30
Dinner- Myer Changs
Top of the hub bar

Sun: 7.3
USS Constitution museum
Freedom trail bunker movement
Pauli's-lunch
Beacon hill
Ned Divines pub - clam chowder
Quincy market
Ferry cruise at Boston Harbor

Mon: 7.4
Biking at esplanade
Thinking cup
Paddy O's- lunch

Last quarter of classes

NBEO part 1 of boards is over!! 3 months of never ending studying is done and I hope I pass the exam!! ****Praying really hard*** Now just a couple more weeks left, and I will be done with classes and finals forever!
We have 4 classes left. The classes are ok, but there are soo many busy work. Not to mention, I still have to write up my case report that I haven't thought about since summer 2017, almost 1 year ago.

Currently, I'm taking:
-Business of Optometry: where we learn about how to find a job, apply for residencies, the process of getting licensed

in different states and completing Continuing Education courses, as well as learning about contracts, negotiations, leases, etc and other practice management information.

-Strabismus and Amblyopia II: Probably the most clinical course we are taking.
-Injections: Learning and doing injections.
-Ophthalmic Lasers.

So for my business class, we had to make a resume and cover letter. I haven't really put a lot of thought into the actual written content yet because a lot of the experiences I put on there are projected only. However, I had a lot of (hours of) fun designing a new resume layout.

from 2016 to 2017

I had some time so I decided to jot down from my memory what happened in 2016. I made a video with snippets of events that happened in 2016. I know I missed some stuff but there were too many pictures to sort through. I failed to edit the photos because that would just make me procrastinate on finishing this project more.

Video clip link

 A lot of things has happened this year. I started off the new year in San Francisco (what better way than being in my favorite area of cali). After the new years vacation, I went back to school in full force. Completed my 2nd year of optometry school, including finishing up my big practical. I finally finished completing retakes and remediations that year. I also attended the OEP conference in March in Chicago. I made my first birthday dinner event that year and I cut my hair above the shoulders for the first time in a long time.

At the end of 2nd year, I attended the school's practice symposium and also went to a social networking event for dinner with docs.

That summer, I also transitioned from 2nd to 3rd year and was flung into clinic independently for the first time.  During the summer, 3rd years also have to take classes and one of the most difficult classes for the summer was "retinal diseases". After 10 weeks of suffering, finally passed that course! I also went on random food adventures, checked out food trucks in chicago during the summer, because we gotta have some fun after working hard right?

Each year as 2nd and 3rd years we have to attend at least one vision screening in the community. For 3rd year, I went to a screening in Chinatown during the summer to get it done with sooner. It was an interesting experience because there was probably about 10 or so students plus 1 attending doctor signing off on each patient. Most of the patients were Chinese (primarily Cantonese speaking) and there was 4 of us who could speak Chinese only (and only 1 could speak Cantonese) so the Chinese speaking students ended up doing case histories and directing patient flow while the other students did the other non-verbal tests.

The American Optometry Association (AOA) was in Boston during the July 4th weekend some friends and I went to Boston then as well. It was my first time in Boston and I had a lovely time there during the summer.
-went to Summer House Santa Monica in Chicago
 -went to New York City as a last minute trip decision.
-attended the American Academy of Optometry meeting in Anaheim and met up with friends in the area during that week.
-bought KMK prep books to study for boards, which I need to start seriously doing soon.

End of 2nd year!

I will write up a post about my 2nd year experiences in a bit.
But for now, I can't believe we just finished our 2nd year of optometry school. We are halfway to OD!

 Now I'm off to California for a one week summer break and next week we will start independent patient care 2x a week plus a specialty rotations. For summer quarter, I will have 5 weeks of cornea and contact lenses in the 2nd half of the quarter. I'm excited to start seeing more patients in clinic because this is what I came here for.

But to start off summer break, let me just say it is SOOO bad for me to come back to California. Because all I do is eat food. -__-

Here are some of my latest photo adventures along with some of my personal touch up.

Optometry School Break Adventures

After winter quarter, I decided to stay in Chicago during the break week. I had my clinic and dispensing shift on Monday and I was redoing my practical on Wednesday. After finally passing my retake my Wednesday, I decided to do some exploring in the city.  That night, me and my roommate went to visit Palmer's House in Chicago. We had a early dinner/high tea at Potter's Lounge inside the hotel. 

Palmer's Hilton House

At Potter's lounge, we made it in time for Happy hour! We tried the cheese and meat platter, tacos, and a dessert with brownie and ice cream! We also got apple ciders to top it off.

After that, we walked to Harold Washington Library and explored the 11 stories in the library. And then we walked back up to North side of Chicago to grab more desserts at Eataly before meeting up with other friends to watch Deadpool at the AMC theatre. 

At Eataly: 

On Saturday, we went out to get dinner at Shake Shack and then got more tea at this fancy cafe called Pierot Gourmet!

Future optometric inspiration

^^credit to optometrystudents.com^^

A FB friend of mine posted this so I'm re-posting on this for my future reference and for anyone else interested in optometry. I thought this was a useful and resource video, about building your career in optometry, whether you are interested in vision therapy or not. That #eyedoclife #inspiration

My first Eyewear dispensing shift

I had my first dispensing shift at the Illinois Eye Institute Eyewear Center Monday evening. At first I was little intimidated because I didn't know what to expect.  I also left my wet pen at home, so I was frantically asking people if they had a wet pen I could borrow right before my shift started, but I found out we did not really need it.

So, I entered the eyewear center and went to the "back room", filled out my information on the check off list. This is how it works: whenever a patient comes in, the front desk staff will ring a "doorbell", so if a student clinician is available in the back room, he/she should go out to the front desk area and find out who the patient is and what insurance they have. Sometimes the patient comes in and needs to select a frame, sometimes they want to adjust a frame, or sometimes the patient is coming to pick up a frame (dispensing). We also need to answer the phone and answer the patient's questions or direct them to the right person, but I haven't answered a phone call yet.

Here is an example of the steps I took when working with a patient:

-- The doorbell rings.-- I go up the front desk, figure out what the patient needs. I double check with the staff to figure out which frames the patient can select from that his/her insurance will cover.
-- I go out to the waiting room and call/greet the patient. ("Hi, my name is Elaine and I'll be helping you today...".
-- I take them to the appropriate frames and explain to them what frames they can get with their insurance. While they select the frame I go ahead and make a copy of the prescription to hand to the patient for their own copy. Sometimes the patient has trouble finding a frame they want, so I will try to help and make suggestions for the patient.
-- Once patient finishes selecting frame, I walk them over to a fitting table and take a couple measurements (such as the pupillary distance, or PD), or the segment height (for bifocals) on the patient and make sure the frame they select is suitable. When I finish, I call over an optician who is available to come and double check my work.

After Thoughts

The optical shift is so much more laid back then a clinic shift. I mean, my clinic shifts have been fairly easy as well because I had a nice attending and a reliable partner to work with so far. But based on what I hear, it's not always that smooth, especially when I become a 3rd year.  But the good thing about working by myself, is I get to fully engage with a patient on my own. I was even able to make small talk with the patient I was working on as well! My patients were a store manager for a Starbucks (or that's what she told me), a grandmother who was a retired cook from the Chicago Public schools, a cute young elementary school girl who loves the color pink, a mother who came in for buy frames for her daughter and ended buying one for herself when she found out her insurance also covered frames! and many more~ 

I feel like when I was working with a partner, I didn't have the opportunity to engage in conversation with my patient because I would get self-conscious and feel bad about taking too much time with the patient so I would act more shy and less initiative. It also makes me feel too relaxed and at ease with a partner because I knew I had someone to fall back on. But then again, optical dispensing is less stressful than my clinic shift, but clinic experience is what I came here for! So I need to learn to be more assertive when I return to clinic again!

Hump day for an optometry student

Today is my longest day. I have 4 hours of lecture from 9-1pm. Then I have lab that starts at 1:30 and ends at 5:20pm. During my 30 minutes lunch time, I walk briskly home (luckily my apartment is only a 3 minute walk from campus) and fix up my pre-cooked microwavable meal. I get ready to go back to campus by 1:30 for class.

Today we have ocular physiology and optometry lab. Ocular Physiology lab was fun today. For the first part of the lab, we just answered questions about different cases. For the last part of lab, we played jeopardy using material from ocular physiology/optometry/anatomy etc, basically everything we ever learned so far was applicable. I'm actually thankful I ended up in a majority guys group. Although being with guys has their own disadvantages, today I felt like being in a predominantly male group was good. The guys are more carefree and like "friendly competition". There was another predominantly male group across the room from us and the guys were jokingly trying to "mess" each other up and give wrong answers. (I mean, everyone's smart, I doubt anyone "fell" for it). I feel like this contrasts doing group activities with a bunch of girls where everyone is quiet and independently looking up answers. I mean, that's nice too, but it's also nice to be able to just laugh and joke with guys who are willing to make themselves the center of jokes. Sometimes we get so caught up with trying to study and remember all the little details about school so we can pass our classes/prepare for boards/be better optometrists, but this is just a little reminder that once in a while it's ok to just make fun and laugh it off! I mean, I didn't really take notes of the information during the jeopardy game (I should have), but why does it matter if I'm not a good student once in a while?

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Also, 2 weekends ago, I decided to attend the Illinois Optometric Association convention with my classmate. It took 1 1/2 hours to get there even though it was only 30 miles because of all the heavy traffic. The school provided us free registration fee and 1 free night from Friday to Saturday. It only costed us time to be attend and $40 round trip each for the Uber ride. It was an interesting experience and I hope to attend another convention in the future. Maybe in a different state so I can sight see as well.

Thoughts on clinic

This is my 4th time working in clinic today, while it was my 2nd time being the "doctor". So, let me explain myself a little bit. As a second year, we have finally learned enough clinical skills to start to see some patients. We get paired up with another classmate and alternate being doctor and scribe. The scribe is responsible for making sure everything is documented correctly into the electronic medical record (EHR) while the doctor is graded based on technical skills and efficiency being the doctor. Professionalism & communication is important in either roles.

Being the scribe is so much more chill. During first we year, we got to shadow the 3rd years in clinic and eventually got to check off a couple skills later during first year once we learned enough skills. I also shadowed a lot of doctors coming in to optometry school, so it's not a big worry for me. Also, typing information into the EHR is a pretty easy learning curve.

However, being a doctor is more intimidating! I need to work on my efficiency. I had my last "doctor" shift for the rest of the quarter since we lost a week during my clinic time since we had too many patient no-shows. :( I need to figure out how to ask the correct case history questions to get the appropriate info I need from the patient. I also need to figure out how to not get the patient to ramble too much. I mean, it's fun getting to hear a patient's life story, but sometimes it takes time away from me doing the tests.... I also definitely need to brush up on my skills some more.

Business Card Sample

My school was having a business card sale, but I decided not to purchase the personalized school set. I decided to challenge my creative juices to see if I could make a better business card. Please give me some constructive feedback what you think! :) Does this look professional/user friendly enough? Would someone want this business card design? 

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Thought Process

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I made a couple drafts on paper to try to come up with a layout before I went to my computer. Here's how my thought process looked like: