Curiosity Has Struck Me

[jkain08]

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Since I'm trying to get familiar with the lot of you here, I thought I'd pose an interesting question. I'd like to hear from a lot of you.

What's your motivation to go to optometry school/be an optometrist? Are you passionate for the subject? Any experiences that have really pushed you in this direction? Or are you just in it for the lifestyle and money?

 

[Shnurek]

Choice D, all of the above 🙂

 

[blackhole2]

I think eyes are badass.

 

[thecgrblue]

I think eyes are badass.

Epic, haha.

I knew I wanted to go into healthcare, just couldn't get excited about anything else.

So, obvious choices were out there. Shadowed dentists...couldn't do it...bored the snot out of me and honestly grossed me out a bit. So I was left with medical school and optometry school. I thought about what I wanted out of a career and I realized...I just wanted a LIFE. Yes, you can have that as an MD/DO...but I have a whole lot of buddies who have moms or dads that are physicians and even though their houses were sweet...they were NEVER around. I would LOVE to have the knownledge of a physician, but not the lifestyle. I honestly don't have the passion for medicine that would get me through those long nights away from my family.

That sounds like I settled on optometry, which is not the case. The choice had always been between the two and when it came down to it optometry won out in every category that was important to me (except $😀). Seriously...you can have a great living as an optometrist and make far more and enjoy life so much more than most any career out there. My wife and I have lived off making $15k this last year while we are both undergrads and I just poop my pants thinking of even making $90k/year.

 

[JMaui]

I'm not discouraging u, but I noticed that you left out some other professions like podiatry and pharmacy. What did u think of those?

Epic, haha.

I knew I wanted to go into healthcare, just couldn't get excited about anything else.

So, obvious choices were out there. Shadowed dentists...couldn't do it...bored the snot out of me and honestly grossed me out a bit. So I was left with medical school and optometry school. I thought about what I wanted out of a career and I realized...I just wanted a LIFE. Yes, you can have that as an MD/DO...but I have a whole lot of buddies who have moms or dads that are physicians and even though their houses were sweet...they were NEVER around. I would LOVE to have the knownledge of a physician, but not the lifestyle. I honestly don't have the passion for medicine that would get me through those long nights away from my family.

That sounds like I settled on optometry, which is not the case. The choice had always been between the two and when it came down to it optometry won out in every category that was important to me (except $😀). Seriously...you can have a great living as an optometrist and make far more and enjoy life so much more than most any career out there. My wife and I have lived off making $15k this last year while we are both undergrads and I just poop my pants thinking of even making $90k/year.

 

[Moptometry]

Can we be honest and tell the interviewer that optometrists have much more free time than MD and thats one of the reasons i wana be an optometrist? I talked to an OD and he told me not to talk about the benefits of the job if an interviewer asked me about the profession? what else am i supposed to say? Its the benefits of the profession that makes it better, otherwise dentistry is kinda cooler in a sense that its like art....like you gota use your hands to make/remove stuff that can be potentially beneficial or detrimental. But i dont like art 😀 Thats the problem

 

[thecgrblue]

I'm not discouraging u, but I noticed that you left out some other professions like podiatry and pharmacy. What did u think of those?

Good point. Honestly, I wasn't really aware of podiatry AT ALL until about a year ago. I looked into for a second, but really was not interested in foot surgery or really anything to do with the feet. I had a toenail die and fall off and it was one of the more disgusting things of my life, haha. Pharmacy...never even desired it for a second. My friend's Dad ran the local pharmacy in my hometown and I flat out said "Your job looks really boring...is it?" to which he went on for 20 minutes and all I gathered was, "Yes, very much so." Now, there is a huge realm to pharmacy I'm sure, but I really don't like Chemistry that much.

To be fair, all other allied health professions, no thanks. I want to be able to be my own boss. I did look into heart bypass perfusionist and pathology assistant (straight up CSI crap, pretty sweet) though.

 

[thecgrblue]

Can we be honest and tell the interviewer that optometrists have much more free time than MD and thats one of the reasons i wana be an optometrist? I talked to an OD and he told me not to talk about the benefits of the job if an interviewer asked me about the profession? what else am i supposed to say? Its the benefits of the profession that makes it better, otherwise dentistry is kinda cooler in a sense that its like art....like you gota use your hands to make/remove stuff that can be potentially beneficial or detrimental. But i dont like art 😀 Thats the problem

Totally talk about it! That was one of my main reasons for choosing optometry. I knew that it would allow me to have everything that I want out of a career and a life outside of work was almost NUMERO UNO! I interviewed at SCO and PUCO (and got in) and the vibe I got was that is the type of person they want: a well-rounded student that knows how to work hard, but knows when to hit the off-switch and just be a normal person. Want to do dentistry? Go shadow a dentist when he packs cord or takes care of a bad abscess....*gag*

 

[TNgal21]

Can we be honest and tell the interviewer that optometrists have much more free time than MD and thats one of the reasons i wana be an optometrist? I talked to an OD and he told me not to talk about the benefits of the job if an interviewer asked me about the profession? what else am i supposed to say? Its the benefits of the profession that makes it better, otherwise dentistry is kinda cooler in a sense that its like art....like you gota use your hands to make/remove stuff that can be potentially beneficial or detrimental. But i dont like art 😀 Thats the problem

The optometrists I shadowed all told me to discuss the benefits I like about the profession. They said interviewers want to hear more than "I like eyes and helping people!" Interviewers want to know that you like the lifestyle (happy patients, respectful environment, separation of time between work and home). During all of my interviews, I was told they liked that I knew more about the life of an OD.

 

[grevengrevs]

My motivation to become an optometrist is to get away from what I am currently doing. I am an active duty AF linguist w/16+ yrs in and less than 4 to go before I retire.
I dated an optometrist for a year and really enjoyed the environment when I would hang out with her at her job as well as how laid back most people in the profession tend to be.
As a single father raising 3 (two will be in college at the same time as me and the youngest will be 9 at the time I enter) I wanted a career that would allow the maximum amount of quality time at home and still paid nicely.

 

[blackhole2]

My wife and I have lived off making $15k this last year while we are both undergrads and I just poop my pants thinking of even making $90k/year.

Hahahahaha! Seriously though, for some people that's not a lot of people but to people like me and you that's A LOT. I'm not trying to be super rich or anything (although it'd be nice) but I just want to live comfortably.

 

[jkain08]

Honestly, the lifetsyle is a big driving force behind my decision to go into optometry, as I'm sure it is with a lot of people. I feel as though there's just a healthy balance between work, life, and money.

Don't get me wrong though, I still love the medical aspects of the job. Investigation, diagnosis, treatment. As a matter of fact, I had planned on going to medical school before I had ever even considered optometry. I want to have a life outside of work though. Not an unreasonable desire. I don't want to work 16 hours a day for the rest of my life. It's just not a healthy balance.

I guess I'm just afraid thought that when it comes time to interview that they'll ask me, "Why is it that you are so sure that optometry is right for you?", or something along those lines, and what I''ll have to say won't be good enough. I want to be honest and tell them, while I do like the medical aspect of the job, the lifestyle is also a driving force here. I just don't want to lose a shot at acceptance by saying that.

I don't know, that part of the interview is just what worries me. Laaaaame.

 

[dawnfirenight]

Epic, haha.

I knew I wanted to go into healthcare, just couldn't get excited about anything else.

So, obvious choices were out there. Shadowed dentists...couldn't do it...bored the snot out of me and honestly grossed me out a bit. So I was left with medical school and optometry school. I thought about what I wanted out of a career and I realized...I just wanted a LIFE. Yes, you can have that as an MD/DO...but I have a whole lot of buddies who have moms or dads that are physicians and even though their houses were sweet...they were NEVER around. I would LOVE to have the knownledge of a physician, but not the lifestyle. I honestly don't have the passion for medicine that would get me through those long nights away from my family.

That sounds like I settled on optometry, which is not the case. The choice had always been between the two and when it came down to it optometry won out in every category that was important to me (except $😀). Seriously...you can have a great living as an optometrist and make far more and enjoy life so much more than most any career out there. My wife and I have lived off making $15k this last year while we are both undergrads and I just poop my pants thinking of even making $90k/year.

Precisely this for me as well. I never had the slightest interest in dentistry or podiatry (mouths and feet, gross 😛). Medicine was what I thought I would go into for years, but about halfway through undergrad I realized that I didn't just want a job, I also wanted a life, and I wasn't passionate enough about medicine to be willing to postpone having kids or not ever seeing my kids for years. Optometry appealed to me in that it was a career in healthcare, which was important and fascinating to me, but the lifestyle was much more balanced than medicine. I shadowed a couple of optometrists and they both said they thought it was a great career for a woman who still wants a balanced family life. And really, the paycut doesn't bug me that much - it's not like optometry is going to leave me poor, and I won't be the only breadwinner, so it's fine.

As for pharmacy...I actually didn't think I would find it interesting, and I was not super fabulous at OChem. By the time I took a pharmacology course and realized it was actually cool, I had already picked optometry and I wasn't about to change my mind. 😛

 

[Moptometry]

Thanks for your input guys. I have not done this before and I was actually worried about my "intentions" of becoming an Optometrist, thinking they might not be good enough or just simply sound lame to the admission people 🙂 To be honest with you , I have shadowed 4 Optometrists and they are all happy with what they have. They do work 5-6 days a week for almost 7-10 hours a day but their work environment is so peaceful and relaxing and they do go on vacation for 3 weeks everyyear. All they are worried about is having to pay for their mortgageSSS ( one of them has 3 houses and he is 33 ) which they get through renting out the houses which again is dealt with through management services. I mean if only all worrisome life events were like this...... 😀
Overall, I think its a good profession;it's not boring, it's "quiet" enough for my personality, the income is decent, it's full of people and it's basically defined by communication skills, Has below 2% unemployment rate and you get to have your business too. The possibilities are endless. I am applying this summer, wish me LUCK.

Thanks for your time