Are you into Optometry?
I have been a small-town girl till my Intermediate and had joined Optometry because I couldn’t get into MBBS like many other students. My family saw this as a better opportunity than a common degree or a paid MBBS. I have passed out Integrated Masters in Optometry and Vision Sciences recently and was astonished by the ample of opportunities waiting for us. I never regretted making the decision to join in Optometry. Not just finishing the course with good grades I had also learned a lot of life lessons during this period of my life.
If you have already joined Optometry and was thinking whether to continue or leave it, give it a second thought. Optometry is in demand everywhere be it teaching or for research or for clinics. It has a very good scope in the future, I’m not telling this because I had done it. Just think, while going on a lane anywhere in the city, how many optical outlets you might have crossed? Is there any day when you have not seen a person with glasses?
I hope you got my point now.
In brief, the future of an optometrist:
- Clinics
- Optical outlets
- Higher studies (Masters, Ph.D., and Postdoc)
- Academics/Research
- Industries
A Bachelor’s degree or Integrated Masters in Optometry would include a one-year clinical internship and a minimum of one project. During this period, you would get to know whether you are interested in clinics or research.
If you are unsure of your interests, I would suggest you talk to people around you, get good contacts on linked in, talk to your professors and people of different Industries. For better understanding, I would recommend you to do an internship in these sectors before you pass out. This will give you a good idea of how you would like to pursue your career in Optometry. You can do this during your holidays rather than doing it part-time. There would be many opticals, industries, and hospitals that would like to take interns for observation. You can approach them via mail, LinkedIn, they would be happy to take.
The perks of doing internships during optometry are
- If you are joining opticals or a hospital for internship or observership, you get a chance to see and use the diagnostic instruments which might not have in your school. You get stipend if you are lucky enough to convince them that you worked hard during the internship. You get to learn about how an optical or a clinical set up would function efficiently.
- In case, you are looking for higher studies, you could opt for doing a short term project with scientists who are working in your research interests. The beauty of optometry is you can study anything you want, in the end, you can integrate it into Optometry. It could be Cognition, Neuroscience, Basic science, Linguistics, Physics, Optics, Physiology, Computing or Machine learning. You would learn how to set up a lab for experiments or how to write a protocol for a project and follow it and how to show up the results.
- Developing communication in the related fields would be helpful if you would want to work in that field in future
- You would get a certificate which adds to your curriculum vitae. It’s always good to have extra certificates other than just a degree
- If you are planning for higher studies, you can get referral letters from these Institutes easily
- You will have an idea of what you are interested in and based on that you can plan your research project during your degree
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