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.