The past several days since last Tuesday was pretty relaxed...we had lots of classes canceled and many of our clinic shifts were canceled too since a lot of the faculty went to the American Academy of Optometry meeting in Anaheim. I had much more free time so I practiced a lot for my upcoming OHP proficiency (remember the one where we have to do extended BIO, gonioscopy, and fundus lens). On Saturday I coordinated a vision screening at Little Tokyo which is in downtown LA. A few other students and I did visual acuities and other entrance tests. I also happened to see a patient that had macular degeneration and a macular hole - these both caused his central vision to be disrupted. I was able to check out his retina to find hard drusen and the hole right at his macula.

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The Strabismus proficiency and the mother of all proficiencies (12 Station) are finally done with!!! This last 3 weeks has definitely been the most stressful part of my life so far. I would even say that it has been as stressful (if not more) than my summer Army ROTC training that I had back in 2004, which was pretty darn stressful I thought...and that also involved a cumulative series of tests (3 years) of military training. Imagine, we had a major lab proficiency plus a cumulative proficiency within 1.5 weeks of each other, and weekly midterms, quizzes, classes, and clinic on top of that! What was specifically hard was the continuous stress and anxiety, whether it was feeling nervous about proficiency grades, freaking out about how hard the midterms were, or having almost no time for yourself or your loved ones!!!

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