As promised, here are pics from the halloween party last night. Surprisingly enough, the party was on campus! But it was a great success and tons of fun...!

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Just wanted to post some pictures from my friend Jeff's surprise birthday party...we had burgers and TONS of Korean BBQ courtesy of my friend Annie (and it tasted awesome!!!).

Here's a picture of Jeff...notice the cake on his chin (by me...muahahaha!).


And here's a group picture...


This Friday will be the Delt's and Phi's annual Halloween Party!!! Come back for some crazy pictures!

Optometry school is not all about exams and classes...there are all these small assignments that you need to do that can be quite time consuming!!! Here are some of these small assignments that I get here at SCCO:

- Visit two different modes of an optometrist practice within the quarter and discuss the pros and cons of each in an essay
- Type up a CV and Resume (more time consuming than you think!!!)
- Write an essay on a ethical topic from the news
- Write a report on the biochemical pathways of diabetic cataract
- Conduct a presentation (with a partner) on a Visual Psychophysics subject based on a journal article

So the take home message is: make sure you have good time management before you get into optometry school because these little assignments will quickly eat away from your studying time!

Ok so I'm starting a new series of blogs, called "Learn Something New." Every now and then I will write a blog that tells you something interesting that I've learned from optometry school. You can use this information to show off during interviews! Please post your comments and let me know what you all think about it!

Many of you already know about red eye. It's seen in a lot of photos due to the camera flash. So where does the redness come from? Well, in the back of the eye is the retina, which contains a layer of cells called photoreceptors. There are two main types of photoreceptors: rods and cones. Here is an illustration:

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Rods contain a photopigment called rhodopsin, which has a reddish-purple tint. In darkness, rhodopsin is in its 11-cis form, which is the colored form. But in light, the photopigment is in its all-trans form, which is the "bleached" or non-colored form. In normal light levels, some rhodopsin is still in its 11-cis form. When the camera flash goes off, the light reflects through the rhodopsin (plus blood vessels) and thus gives off the reddish color you see in the pupil.

Some cameras have a "red eye reduction" capability. The way this works is the camera flashes once very briefly, then flashes again when the picture is taken. So can you guess why there is the first flash? Well, there are two reasons:

1) That first flash basically makes all of the 11-cis rhodopsin (reddish-purple form) into all-trans (non-colored form). So in essence, the first camera flash "bleaches" the rhodopsin, thereby reducing the amount of redness reflected off by the retina.

2) The first flash causes the pupil to constrict (get smaller) so the amount of light entering the eye in the second flash is reduced, thus allowing less reflectance (and therefore less red color) coming out of the eye.

Ok now you can go and show off to your friends and tell them about red eye now...!

I have a biochem exam coming up Monday, and a major part of the exam involves carbohydrate metabolism (yes, that's Glycolysis, the TCA/Citric Acid/Krebs cycle, and the Electron Transport Chain all over again!). I didn't take Cell Metabolism during my undergrad so this stuff is pretty hard for me. Lots to memorize!!! I'm just rewriting the pathways over and over again. So it's really not a bad idea to try to keep this in mind - remember your metabolism stuff!!! Good thing I did really well in the last biochem exam, because I'm preparing to sustain some damage on this next exam.

Yup...we have to memorize all of this again!!!

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Unfortunately, I didn't win the class president elections...but hey, I'm really glad for who won...it happened to be one of my good friends and I know he will do a great job.

Also, I forgot my camera for the bowling night...sorry! Ok just wanted to update you all...come back soon!

So not much has been going on lately besides the usual (studying and weekly exams). But tomorrow is the Class President elections, and guess who is running...yours truly! Soooo yeah instead of prepping for tomorrow's speech, I decided to procrastinate a little to update you all on what's been going on. So wish me luck and hopefully I can become Class President! I'll make sure to tell you all about it in my next blog.

So other than that, in the past week or so I've been ordering equipment. So when you are optometry school, be prepared to spend literally $1000s for your equipment. Make sure that when you work out your financial aid stuff, keep that in mind! Most schools tend to give you a sample student budget though so don't worry too much about it. So far I've ordered a Diagnostic Kit (Opthalmoscope, Retinoscope, and Finnoff Transilluminator) for about $800 and a Trial Lens set for about $600. There's definitely more equipment purchasing to come in the next two years. I'll make an article in the "Optometry Students" section in the future that talks about the different brands of equipment and my take on each.

Here's what a Retinoscope looks like...it's a tool to get a rough estimate of a patient's prescription:

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This is the Ophthalmoscope...it's used to look at the back of the eye (the retina). This is a picture of the head only...the handle (battery) attaches to the bottom, and looks similar to the handle above:

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And here is the Finnoff Transilluminator, which is basically a light used to check pupil responsiveness:

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Lastly, here is what a Trial Lens set looks like...just a bunch of lenses used for refraction:

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Tomorrow is the Omega Delta big sib/lil sib night...I'll be introduced to my "big sib" in the fraternity. It's going to be at a bowling alley...hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera so that I can show you all some pictures!