The most important thing is to always be professional. You want the staff and optometrists to respect you if you want to create a relationship that could be beneficial in the future. From my experience, take a small notepad and pen in the exam room and write down anything interesting or something you have not heard of before and then research it on your own. The next time you are in the office, ask the optometrists about that disease or infection and ways to treat such conditions. As far as the profession, ask all the optometrists what their day to day routine is and their road to becoming an optometrist (i.e. education, externships etc). Hopefully they will be different ages and genders and provide multiple views of the life of an optometrist. I hope this helps, good luck.