First thing - as I looked at my blog just now, I realized that some readers might find some of the ads unsuitable (they were not explicit, but they were most certainly against my own morals). I made sure that I did the best I could to correct the situation, and I deeply apologize if any of the ads were offensive. I have limited control over what ads are put up since they are controlled by Google, but I must keep them up since the (small) revenue they develop helps offset website hosting costs.

Second year is almost over - I can't believe how fast it has gone by!!! The next two weeks will be the busiest of the quarter, and that is unfortunate since this quarter has been really hectic and it would have been nice to taper off the end of the quarter. However this time we don't have any proficiencies in our reading week, which is a nice breather since our last couple of quarters involved some kind of proficiency during reading week. It's also nice to have that reading week somewhat free because we will be hammered with a barrage of finals - I'll fill in more about that later...

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Recently we have been getting lectures in our contact lens class on ocular prosthetics, which is the field of artificial, implanted eyes or eye components. This is a very interesting field to me since I remember growing up knowing a man who had his eye enucleated (the entire eyeball is removed from the eye) due to a car accident. The man wore a prosthetic, and one time he popped it out and showed it to me!

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Today I took an ocular pharmacology midterm, which involved loads and loads of information regarding anesthetics, ocular dyes, steroids, analgesics (pain relievers), and other drugs. By the way, if you didn't know, optometrists (in California at least) can prescribe all sorts of non-ocular medications including the opiate Hydrocodone (Vicodin). There was so much information to cover in very, very little time, and I haven't felt unprepared like that in a long time. I came in the test ready to do poorly, but oddly enough I scored well above the mean! I am stating this to bring up a point. I have been getting about the mean score every time in the lecture exams so far this quarter (and the mean is usually more or less 85%); with each of those exams, I felt more prepared than the one I had today. Again, I cannot overemphasize how, for some reason, the amount of preparation you have for a test does not correlate to the grades you get! I have come up with a conclusion as to why this happens...

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This quarter has really gotten out of hand! We have so many side things (assignments, proficiencies, papers, etc.) on top of two midterms per week, so free time is very sparse. Don't worry though, I will keep you all updated soon! Wish me luck!