Hi everyone!
It feels like so much has happened since I last wrote on the blog. I’d love to fill you in on my third year at SCO. It’s been a very exciting year and so many new things have begun. The most exciting of those new things is that I began seeing patients in The Eye Center. Of course, I had spent some time shadowing in The Eye Center during second year but this has been the real deal. As third-year students at SCO, we spend three days a week in the clinic. One of those days is spent in Adult Primary Care and the other two days we rotate through different areas of the clinic such as Optical, Technology, Vision Therapy, etc. I have learned SO much in such a short amount of time and that’s what I love most. Naturally, I was a little intimidated and nervous to begin seeing patients alone, but I have gotten much more comfortable as time has progressed. And of course, much faster!! The staff doctors at SCO are super helpful, and that’s what I’m most thankful for. I never feel embarrassed to ask them questions and to bounce ideas off of them. That has been so fundamental as I start to brainstorm through differential diagnoses that I will need to consider in my future clinical years.
In addition to beginning to see patients in clinic, we have also selected and been assigned our externship sites for our fourth year. At SCO, we rotate through three different externship sites. One of those externship sites is at The Eye Center and the other two are at an institutional site and a private practice site. The process of choosing externship sites can be quite involved but our externship office does an amazing job making it run as smoothly as possible. For my externship sites, I will be spending the summer of my fourth year at The Eye Center and then I will be headed to the Daytona Beach VA for my fall semester and then Coastal Vision for my private practice site in Fernandina Beach, FL. I’m really excited to be back in Florida for my last two externship sites but am also feeling sad knowing that this will officially be my last year in Memphis :( It’s crazy to think how quickly time has gone…
Lastly, at this time, my classmates and I have begun preparing for Part I of National Boards. We take Part I in March of our third year. So although our class schedule has been much lighter than it was first and second year, studying for boards will be occupying our time. It’s not the most exciting thing to talk about but I’m sure once it’s over, we will feel very, very relieved!
Thanks for reading!!!
Stephanie Ross