A day in the life of an OptStudent

Just this morning, I stood in front of the SCCO amphitheater and finally became a doctor! Finally after 4 years of hard work, sacrifice, and more stress than you can think of, I attained the dream that I have been looking forward to when the idea of optometry school first came into mind during my college years. I look back at some of the blog posts and it reminds me of how much we all have been through, all the way back to day one (it's pretty surreal looking back at those old posts!). I am thankful to God, my family, friends, classmates, and especially my soon-to-be wife in two weeks for all their support! I also have a special thank you to all of you who have followed me in this journey in this blog...I would have never thought that I would have taken this website this far! It was always interesting to see people come to school and say, "hey, you're the guy with the website!" and hear back about how OptStudent.com has helped them get through the pre-optometry process. As far as what's next for this blog and website...well I won't be posting as often as I did previously but I sure will give you all some updates here and there, especially with updates on my residency and adventures as an Army Optometrist! Thanks again for following this blog and wish you all the best in your own paths in becoming an optometrist yourself!

For the past couple of days, there have been multiple fires in the LA/Orange County area, and it so happens that two of them are pretty close to where our school is and where I live. Just a few blocks away is the cutoff for the evacuation for one of the closer fires in Brea, which is just a few miles north of here. The smoke has been pretty bad, since it has been blowing into Fullerton from three areas (Brea, Diamond Bar, and Yorba Linda)...the air quality thus has been poor, well at least it feels that way since you're constantly breathing smoke even though you're indoors. Lots of ashes have been strewn all over the streets as well. Many homes and other property have been destroyed, and several thousand residents have been displaced due to the evacuations. Since the immediate area is still considered secure, school is still in session, and the clinic is still open so we students have no choice but to stick around despite all of the smoke. Well, what can I say, that's one of the realities of living here in Southern California. Even though the weather is mild all year round, the combination of dry air, dry shrubbery/grass, and the Santa Ana winds make fires a frequent threat.

The past several days since last Tuesday was pretty relaxed...we had lots of classes canceled and many of our clinic shifts were canceled too since a lot of the faculty went to the American Academy of Optometry meeting in Anaheim. I had much more free time so I practiced a lot for my upcoming OHP proficiency (remember the one where we have to do extended BIO, gonioscopy, and fundus lens). On Saturday I coordinated a vision screening at Little Tokyo which is in downtown LA. A few other students and I did visual acuities and other entrance tests. I also happened to see a patient that had macular degeneration and a macular hole - these both caused his central vision to be disrupted. I was able to check out his retina to find hard drusen and the hole right at his macula.

Read more »