Special Occasions!

I'm going to start with some old updates, but during my White Coat weekend (about a month ago, oops), my parents came up and we took some time to go to the zoo!!  The Memphis Zoo is amazing!  Here are a few snapshots, just to give you an idea of what we saw:

WOLF!

They have pandas!  Oh so cute :)

The entire weekend was great!!  We had a big BBQ dinner Friday night, the zoo on Saturday, and then we came home to watch the wolfpack play.  It was great to see my parents, but it was sad to see them leave.

I also wanted to share this picture....

... To prove that we've been keeping up with wolfpack football!

Finally, it's Halloween in one week, so Tyler and decided to carve a pumpkin together.  We went to the pumpkin patch last weekend to pick out a fun pumpkin!  I had a lot of tests this past week to study for, so we decided to carve it over my birthday weekend!  Here is our final product... GO PACK!!

We are sooooooo proud of our awesome pumpkin!

Finally, some pictures from my birthday celebration!  We went to Silky O' Sullivan's on Beale Street.  It's a really fun dueling piano bar/ Irish pub!  My friend Joey was celebrating his 26th and I was celebrating my 23rd!

Dueling pianos!!!  These guys were hilarious!  

They called me and Joey to the stage to sing Happy Birthday to us!

Those are all the updates I have for now!  If you're reading this, keep in touch!  I miss everyone so much!

Birthday in another City

So tomorrow is my birthday, and it's really not feeling like it.  With another wave of tests finally completed, I feel so drained.  A part of me is thinking that sleep would be a wonderful present.  However, tomorrow morning is the Vision Walk.  I am really excited about it, and a ton of SCO students go to raise awareness and walk to join the fight against blindness.  It just always seems that there's something to do on your special day.  Last year at this time I was interviewing to be accepted to Southern and now I'm here.  I cannot believe it's been a whole year! 

Tests have been going rather well.  Not the same great grades from undergrad, but the material is way harder and there's no give from professors (aka a curve).  I'm definitely enjoying what I'm learning, but there is a lot of material to keep with.  I'm starting to forget what a "break" really is!

A lot of classmates are going home this weekend, whether it's for their undergrad's homecoming or just to visit friends and family.  It was a great weekend for it since our next test isn't until Thursday.  I kind of wish I had made the effort to go home now, but I still don't think we would be able to afford it or really have as much time as I would like to visit everyone. 

Tomorrow night I'm going with some friends to a dueling piano bar downtown.  It should be fun. :)  One of my friend's fiance, who is here with her, has his birthday on Sunday the 24th.  His dad is coming in to celebrate with him, so we will all be downtown!  

I'm so ready to go back home sometime though.  Although that's practically months away, I cannot wait for it!!  I miss North Carolina so much- especially people's ability to drive better.  Every now and again I will get really home sick.  I like being in TN because this is where SCO is, but I hate the fact that it's 12 hours away from home...

I will let you know how my birthday celebrations go :)  I MISS EVERYONE SO MUCH!

Learning so much and wishing it could stick better!

I just need to keep practicing!  I need to keep drilling and studying!!!

I have learned so much already and I find myself randomly thinking, "what was that pathway again?"  "What are all the branches of the trigeminal nerve and what all do they innervate?" "How am I supposed to perform this chair skill?"  "Should an esophore have base in or base out prisms to correct their phoria?"  And the list goes on!

I found out in my Theory and Methods lab that I have some exophoria (a tendency for my eyes to turn out).  Don't worry- You'll never see me wall-eyed, because I have enough positive fusional vergence to overcome this tendency, but it makes sense since I am a myope (blurred distance vision).   I've never been told this before, but it's never been an issue, so it's okay.  :)

I am studying for my Theory and Methods test that's tomorrow, and there is so much information!  We've learned about AC/A ratios (the convergence response to the convergence stimulus), how to take proper visual acuities, how big letters on the Snellen chart need to be to have 20/20, 20/30, 20/40, etc. letters, why pinhole accuities are taken, how to test the cranial nerves through extraocular motilities, and the list goes on!

I've been doing very well in the class thus far.  I made a 98 on my retinoscopy practical (the two points were because I forgot to write DS after two of my spherical measurements- so I still got all the powers right).  My first test was okay, but I'm hoping to do better on the next one.

I just got another work study position that's much better than my other one!  As a class we are split up into 5 lab groups.  Each group has a different lab at different times every day.   Each group has a day off; my group's is Thursday.  However, one of the groups that has theory and methods lab on Thursday had an odd number of people in the lab.  Now I get to have an extra day of Theory and Methods lab to make that lab group have an even number of people... aka I get paid to have extra practice!  YEAH!  God is so good :)

Optics is one of my favorites classes!  At first I didn't like it because we're doing 'team-based learning' but now I really enjoy it!  It's like constant group studying to really test my knowledge everyday and work out kinks that I don't understand!  Plus, optics is one of the main reasons I got interested in optometry!!  I made a 100 on my first test in that class and my group grade is like a 97 right now :)  I've really enjoyed learning about astigmatism, and now I know that I am an against-the-rule compound myopic astigmat in both eyes!  Because of my -0.75 DC astigmatism, I get to participate in a study that Dr. Jackson is doing!   I love participating in studies at school.  We always get some kind of compensation, so it's great for struggling students :)

Life at home is going well.  Tyler and I don't get to see each other that much, but we try to spend as much time together as we can (even if I'm sitting on the couch next to him studying while he watches TV).

Next week I have an Anatomy test on Monday, and an Optics test on Wednesday and my BIRTHDAY Saturday!!!

November will be a rough month, so I will try to get in a couple more blogs in before then!

My Future in Funny Videos!

I don't know who in my class found this first one, but it is a hilarious depiction of what I will deal with when I'm finally in clinic at SCO- and for the rest of my life.

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7098419/?ref=nf


The next video I have watch to help me study for my Neuroanatomy test.  It is a hilarious remake of Bush's song "Glycerine."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH1BwBRo44g


Please do enjoy fellow optometrists/medical doctors' creativity!

Now off to more studying... sorry for the short post, but this neuroanatomy is tomorrow!  I will give a more detailed update soon! :)

It's been a while- FIRST TEST!

Today I had my first test in optometry school!  It was in Physiology, which was okay.  I could've studied more, but it's always really hard to study for a 40 question multiple choice test over TONS of "review" material.  I had definitely learned everything at least once before, it was just definitely rusty in the back of my brain and it's hard to decide (when studying), what he will find important.

Anyway, after the test in Physiology, I had a quiz in Optics.  We always have a quiz on our reading at the start of each new unit.  I made an 80, so that's not too bad.  The majority of that class is based on group work, and my group works fantastically together, so I'm not worried overall in that class.  However, I did wish we had more lecture time (sounds crazy doesn't it!).  I mean we read a lot outside of class to teach ourselves and then work through group assignments together to "learn" Optics.  It's just difficult sometimes because if we don't truly understand what we read, we "brew up" ways to solve the problems.

I have my next two tests on Friday back to back.  The first one will be at 7:45am (Anatomy), and the second will be at 8:45am (Theory and Methods).  Anatomy will certainly be tough!  I've never had this much information for one class in my entire life!   It's intense!

After lab today, I had work study for 2 hours, then I went up to the lab room to practice retinoscopy.  We have a practical next Thursday, and I've been really inconsistent with my ability to do well.  Basically, we can find patient's prescriptions by looking at how a beam of light is reflected.  We try to see if there is "with" or "against" motion, and from there we know whether to add plus or minus.  We also have to take into account if there is any astigmatism.  We look for the astigmatic band and make sure to neutralize the correct meridian first.

When I'm in lab, I have a lot of trouble because there are so many people around me doing different things and we have to work side by side with our partners using one chair and one phoropter- not much space at all!  Plus hearing other people talk about how their neutralizing their schematic eyes doesn't help me think through why I am doing what I am doing.

I practiced for another hour and fifteen minutes after I got off work, and it went much better.  I still need to work on my speed.  By next Friday I need to be able to neutralize 10 lenses in 30 minutes.  It should be crazy, but I am going to practice more this week, weekend, and next.

My white coat ceremony is NEXT THURSDAY! :)  I am so excited to finally have that thing in my possession.

Well... now that I have rambled enough- I am going to go study for optics and anatomy!

Kim :)

My First Eye Exam at the Eye Center at SCO

I had my first exam at the Eye Center today.  It was very different for me as it was my first exam not with Dr. Moser.  We get to be patients for students in their 3rd year of optometry school, so they can't be as fast as the doctors.  I knew it would take a while, and I couldn't be impatient since that's going to be me in a couple of years.

I told them about how I can never keep my two-week lenses for a full two weeks, so they are making me use clear care solution.  I've never used it before, so we'll see how it works.  Everyone who uses it seems to love it.

I certainly get homesick sometimes from the little differences here and there.  This appointment was one of them.  The one doctor I went to in Raleigh who I actually enjoyed, and whose energetic personality got me interested in the profession, was Dr. Moser.  The students needed practice with a lot of things that didn't need to be done, so it was hard to sit through monotonous procedures.

The exam took 2.5 hours, and I have to come back Wednesday the 29th to follow up on the contact lens prescription and get dilated.  I'm not sure if I find this Rx as sharp as my previous one, but I think they took away some of my minus.  As Dr. Newman told us, myopes will fight for their minus, so you don't want to take it away... but they did!  Oh well.  I will mess with these for a few weeks and see how I do.  I have toric lenses in both eyes now, instead of just my right.  It's weird.  Nonetheless, the students were extremely nice and patient- especially with my inability to have my IOP checked with a puff of air.  I don't think she's ever seen anyone blink as much as me.  Oops!

In 2 weeks I will have my first two exams in Anatomy and Theory & Methods.  Both of those exams are scheduled for Friday.  The following week I have two exams, a quiz, and a lab practical on retinoscopy.   One exam is Physiology and the other is Optics.  My quiz is in Biochemistry.  I would say keeping up with 23 hours and a work study is the most time consuming schedule I have ever had in my life.

I'm going to try to join the Optometric Private Practice club and FCO (Fellowship of Christian Optometrists).  I wanted to do SVOSH (Student Volunteers for Optometric Service to Humanity), but there is a TON of lab hours required to go on the trips and you have to do a lot of jobs to raise money for the trips.  It's a very time-consuming volunteer organization that I just don't think I will have time for while trying to maintain happiness in my first year of marriage.  Hopefully, I can join it next year, but if not, FCO still does amazing mission trips!  Furthermore, my reward for myself was to under-commit myself in graduate school :)

Speaking of marriage, Tyler and I are doing wonderful!  He is working at a gymnastics gym about 15 minutes away from our apartment.  He is also looking for some other part time jobs to cover the morning hours that he doesn't work.  I know he will be able to find a teaching job whenever his NC license comes in, but we're not sure how long that will take.

Our tadpoles still haven't gotten legs and we have NO idea why.  We also lost the female frog about a week ago.  Tyler went to Petco yesterday and got another female.  We had never named the frogs before (beats me why not), so when Tyler got the new female we decided to name them.  The female is Kirby and the male is Sleven.

Work study is pretty good.  I am working with Campus Security and it's pretty low key.  I feel like we make work for ourselves that's totally pointless (radio checks every 30 minutes, writing our hours down in two different places, and putting our initials on printed e-mails that our boss receives).  However, I get paid $11/hour to pretty much sit at the front desk in the tower and make sure no one without a badge enters the building.

Wow!  That was a lot of updates.  I'm really tired, but I still have some more studying to do before I can sleep.  Class starts bright and early at 7:45am on Fridays, and I don't get to leave until 4:30 (theory and methods lab).

E-mail me if you have any updates to share with me or just want to say hi!   :)

Keeping up as an OD student

I had my first day of work study yesterday, and getting ready to head to my second day in about 15 minutes.  It's pretty low key considering most people who enter have badges, so I don't need to check them in.

I am working really hard to keep up with classes.  There's a lot of reading, and a ton of tests coming up.  I have so much terminology to learn and I've just been using quizlet.com to make online flashcards for myself.

I've got different types of ductions, versions, vergence, and phorias to rememeber.  Plus all the names of muscles that control eye movement and and the cranial nerves that control those muscles.

We looked at a bunch of ocular anatomy slides in my anatomy lab today.  It was really neat to see how the glands and muscles looked on a microscopic level.  It was also amazing to see the different layers of the retina on the slide.  We're going to go more in depth with this ocular anatomy later, so we'll look at those parts in greater detail, but it was still good to get an overview.  My favorite is how the iris looks, and being able to see the tiny projections from the ciliary body called zonules that connect to the lens.  I can't wait until we actually get to dissect an eye to really see all the parts in 3D.

We got to see virtual and real images in our optics lab yesterday using a screen a light source and a lens.  The lens was set up between the light source and the screen and we had to figure out where the image was using the screen.  It definitely helped in understanding virtual images.

I have my first appointment at the eye center tomorrow.  I hear it takes a really long time, because students are doing all the procedures, but that's okay.  I must be patient because that will be me in a couple of years.  I honestly just need contact lenses, so I can't wait to get in there and get my Rx figured out!

Until next time  <3  :)