Author: Kirsten Ellis

In August of 2019, if you asked me what I expected my four years of optometry school to look like, I probably would’ve answered something along the lines of “studying all the time,” “constantly stressed,” or “finally learning specifics about a subject that interests me.” Now that I am two years into school and on the verge of seeing my first patient (AH!), all these expectations have been true to a certain extent. However, what I didn’t expect from optometry school was to thrive under such extreme pressure with the best community of people I’ve ever met.

Like many others, March of 2020 threw a gigantic unforeseen wrench into most of my plans. Spoiler alert: what was supposed to be a two-week quarantine turned into more than two years. In August of 2020, the start of optometry school looked vastly different than I envisioned. Lab groups were limited to 15 individuals, two of which were my roommates, whom I met for the first time on move-in day to an apartment I had never seen before. We received our white coats from a folding table in the lobby in intervals to prevent us from getting within six feet of each other. In our labs, everyone was fully masked, and students were sent home to watch our professors lecture from a screen in our respective rooms. Club meetings looked more like webinars, in which you could submit questions, but everyone was generally too nervous to do so.

When I look back and reflect, this time was one of the strangest in my life. During a roughly four-month period, I knew only 15 people in my entire class. Not only this, but I also had not even seen what 13 of their faces looked like from the eyes down. The days looked like an unending loop of lectures and lab with almost zero social interaction or extracurricular activities. For an entire semester all I did was study, practice, study, practice and study some more. While my grades had never looked better, I was craving the ability to be immersed in the learning environment and do some of the fun events that go along with the stress of learning.

While that was a strange and stressful time in my life, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. As the summer before my second year came around, we received news that classes would be available in the coveted “in-person lecture” option! Clubs could even meet in person (with food)! Finally, a year into school, the full optometry experience was available. I was able to sit in a lecture hall with 130 of my classmates, still fully masked of course, learning the same content in the same place. As simple as this sounds, we forget about the joy those 10-minute breaks between classes gives you when you can joke around with your friends. This was the first time I was able to see most of my classmates’ lower half of their face as we ate lunch. I was shocked to realize that I had unintentionally already filled in the lower half of their face and was completely wrong!

This summer period was the time I can remember the possibilities really opening for my optometric education. Two years into school, I have now had the previously unattainable privilege to meet and interact with most of my classmates, network with some very wise doctors at various club meetings, and shadow older students in the clinic. What began as a period of isolation and fear of the future has become a wide-open space of endless possibilities. And to top it all off, on May 15 of 2022, I was ceremoniously handed my white coat (that is stained with coffee, ink and sodium fluorescence since I’ve been wearing it for two years now) and headed off to examine my first patient the very next day.

Starting optometry school amid a global pandemic has come with some challenges to say the least, but I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything. The past two years have allowed me to appreciate the immense privilege I’ve been granted to be learning about a field I adore and implementing that knowledge surrounded by some of the best people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. School is hard. Life is hard. But overcoming challenges has only made us stronger, more present and prepared to tackle anything that comes our way.

Rachel Ryan, ICO, Class of 2024

Student doctors often find themselves placed in uncomfortable situations in clinic. That all too familiar panicked feeling of seeing something unknown during an exam and having a waiting attending to report back to. Of course, they are there to help us and increases our knowledge in any way they can. But, it is only natural for predisposed perfectionists to want all the answers right now. Restrained by the limitations of our current knowledge base, we yearn to be able to help our patients and provide the best care possible. Unfortunately, the curse of optometric expertise is paid in sleepless nights studying, self-inflicted symptoms of dry eye, and lots and lots of experience in clinic. This only comes with time. And even still, there remains endless knowledge to be obtained.

It is daunting being at the foot of this mountain of eye-related things we have yet to conquer. By breaking it down step-by-step, our goal of climbing that mountain and becoming the doctors we want to be will hopefully become more tangible. After all, there are plenty of former student doctors who experienced all of the same feelings of frustration and fear that we have in optometry school. If they can become successful optometrists, why not us? It is so tempting to fall into the egotistical trap of acting like we do not need any help. This attitude, however, will not help any of our future patients. We must take each patient encounter as a learning experience to become better and give ourselves the grace to learn. By pushing ourselves to shamelessly ask questions in clinic and be surrounded by more knowledgeable people, we will slowly become knowledgeable ourselves. Then one day, maybe we will have student doctors looking up to us.

We’re all familiar with the optical phenomenon of a reflection; a wavefront enters a system, bounces off a reflecting surface and travels back to the medium from which it came. Reflection has multiple meanings, though, and to me it has been one of the most important words in my life. A reflection is so much more than something that I look at in the mirror every morning. It is a view that is deeper into an individual than any gonio or fundus lens can achieve. To me, a reflection is a glance at the characteristics that someone possesses that remind me of myself. For example, when I see my younger cousins being playful and competitive with each other, I see those traits as a reflection of my younger self.

My name is Tim Davis, and I am a second-year optometry student at the University of Houston College of Optometry. I am originally from Columbus, Ohio. I grew up in Columbus city limits and attended public school for the first couple of years of my life. In the third grade, my family moved from the city to the suburbs. I remember the adjustment that I had to make in my life, trying to fit into a new environment and make new friends. Little did I know at the time, this transition into the suburbs would allow me to meet my now best friends and make a connection to the greatest reflection that I’ve ever encountered in my life. One of my best friend’s mothers happened to be an optometrist, one that I saw a reflection of myself in. In her, I saw myself and all my dreams and aspirations standing before me as a proud Black doctor. As I got older, I understood the value of being connected to her more and more, and having her guidance and mentorship has been truly invaluable in my life. The exposure that I was able to get to the field of optometry at a young age, and the representation and success that she had in her life is what I believe ignited the fire and sparked the passion inside of me to achieve greater.

As I write this piece now, I can’t help but think of all the reflections that I see when I fly back home to visit my family. All the potential that resides within each one of my little cousins and other family members to become doctors, lawyers, engineers or whatever they desire to become in their lives. This same potential extends past my family, it’s to my people as a whole.  It brings me anguish to realize the inequalities that plague the lives of many people who look like me, and this harsh reality has driven me to want to make a change. I want to bring awareness to these issues of inequality and to promote and enact change in the future so that more people who look like me can tap into their true potential. In an effort to inform the community, I have created a podcast entitled “Thoughts with TD the Future OD,” which highlights my personal experiences with diversity in the field, some of the systemic barriers that people like me face, and how we can move forward to diversify the field of optometry in the future.

In conclusion, I know that I am blessed to be in the position that I’m in right now in my life. I know that my achievements come on the heels of generations of hard work and sacrifice. I am dedicated to bringing awareness and enacting change in whatever way I can to make life better for the future generations. I want to look around and see more reflections every day, living their best lives and tapping into their true potential.

Link to my podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/31YOZGXBTzD8sKtZ1jlEhi?si=Ne4DBCxyTUqPlakJesvKIg