I have had a first-hand experience with what you are trying to do. I go to school at Penn State and over the summer, I emailed an optometrist at this practice called Nittany Eye Associates here in State College. He was very helpful, and arranged a date for me to come down and shadow him. The practice is extremely busy; there are 6 optometrists and they each see about 30 patients a day. While I was there, I didn't have a great amount of time to talk one on one with him since he was so busy but whenever I had a chance, I asked him questions about the profession. As I was leaving, I noticed there were other people working there as technicians and I just casually asked him if they needed any extra help several days a week. My intention was not to get a paid job, but to just get extra experience to put on my application. As it turns out, they were extremely short handed at the time, and he offered me a position as an optometric technician on the spot. I started the job 3 weeks ago, and it has been an excellent experience. I do lots of pre-testing (auto-refraction, peripheral field tests, visual acuities, Non-contact tonometry, Optomap testing, OCT testing, as well as dilations and ordering contact lenses). I would have done all of this for free but getting a small pay each week is definitely an added bonus. My advise to you is to be enthusiastic and seem interested in the field. Maybe you will be as lucky as I was!
