Do I need to work in an optometry clinic? 🤔

It seems like there's a pressure (maybe it's FOMO) to spend summers before and during optometry school working in a clinic. But is it necessary, or even helpful?

👍 PROS:

The biggest pro is that working at a clinic makes gaining shadowing experience, an important part of most applications, much more accessible. Asking for the chance to shadow an optometrist is much easier once you already have your foot in the door working at the clinic than it is if you were to send a cold email.

What else can you gain?

Well, it can be helpful getting a feel for how a clinic runs, and learning how to dispense glasses, adjust frames, and sell. This is alongside all of the soft skills like time management, organization, and customer interactions that you would get from any other general-population-facing job. There is also some opportunity for networking with the staff (including optometrists) at the clinic.

Great. So I guess working at a clinic is a must, then?

Not so fast.

👎 CONS:

The cost of working at a clinic is not so much cost as opportunity cost - loss of the chance to do something else, other activities that could widen your breadth of experience.

As an optometrist, you will be likely working in a clinic for the rest of your career. What's the rush to spend all your summers in one? There's the benefit of gaining some know-how, yes, but you run into diminishing returns fairly quickly. After a couple of weeks, you won't be learning very much.

Why do you think the turnover rate for dispensing/administrative staff is often high? They are easy to train, cheap, and often not intended as permanent positions. (Don't get me wrong, these staff fulfill very important roles in running a clinic, but your career focus is elsewhere, isn't it?)

OK. So what should you do?

🧠 The _master plan:

Here's my recommendation. Try to avoid the FOMO, and don't do what everybody else is doing. How else is your application going to stand out?

First off, allocate just one summer (or less) to wokring in a clinic. This is just to feel the atmosphere and, more importantly, to get that critical shadowing experience.

After filling this quota, branch out. Take some risks. Pursue something that you're interested in, but wouldn't be willing to bet your entire career on. Here are some ideas:

• Join a start-up (work for little or no pay, if that's what it takes)
• Pick up a new sport, and compete at a rookie tournament
• Work an entry level job in a completely unrelated field
• Do research
• Launch (or try to, at least) a business idea
• Train to run a marathon

The value of a rich breadth of experiences far outweighs, in my opinion, the experience and meagre income that comes from squirreling every free moment outside of class working in a clinic. Not to mention, you will learn all the things you learn working in a clinic (and have way better networking opportunities!) during your clerkship rotations in 4th year, anyway.

So take a chance, and do some exploring!

I hope you found this helpful, and don’t think that finding a research position is nearly as scary! If you still have any questions or things you’re worried about, leave a comment below, or send me a DM on IG!