Recent content by Ryan_eyeball

I absolutely loved my VA externship as it was interesting and rewarding. As an outsider looking at a full time VA position some pro's/cons I could observe. 1) Job security with salary, retirement, and health insurance 2) No scheduling or insurance billing/hassles 3) Complete health record in...

17 years as an OD, and paid off my student loans in 2019, and paid off roughly $115k. It was the last loan I paid off on our debt free (Dave Ramsey) journey since the interest was around 2.25% for most of the loan. At age 44 now I still enjoy what I do but hate dealing with insurance. The whole...

I agree look at the contract you signed and there should be a opt out clause. Some contracts I've read make you pay rent up until you leave or pay for fill in coverage for any unworked days. Be up front and just tell them you're going in another direction. 60 miles to and from any job IMHO...

Around 10-12 patients a day in a commercial Walmart setting. Kansas is tough to license in and its not a desirable state to live in either so the district managers leave us Optometrists alone. Within 60 miles half of the 14 Walmarts have no Optometrist. I've done fill in work examining up to...

Are the techs doing the refractions? If so, then 20-30 becomes achievable without burning the OD out. This frees the OD up to do SLE, fundus exam with BIO or other trouble shooting problems. Unfortunately in my state they require the OD to do the refraction. Although I suppose you could have a...

My best year in corporate was $300k (at 3 locations 6-7 days/wk) but now I've settled in around the $150k net range (1 location). I'm content where I'm at since it's only 4-5 minutes from my home, and we love the area that we live. My wife would have a hard time leaving the area and church we're...

This is from 2006 in Kansas. The process consisted of 4 parts spread out over two days. Day 1 consisted of a 10 minute interview with the board ranging from why you wanted to practice in the state, anatomy knowledge, importance of continuing education,etc. This was followed by a 1 hour test on...

My advice is to contact the Optometry state board in New Jersey. A simple email or call from a state board will light a fire under the OD to release the Rx. Its a shame that it would have to come to that though.

If you can keep your Optometry school loans under 100k you'll be in a good situation going forward. Starting salaries seem to have a range from $80k-$120k depending on the part of the country. Benefits are usually under appreciated by most employees since they do not see the monetary costs like...

OD school must have changed since I was in school. There was no academic summer semester between year 1-2. The summer between year 2-3 we could do part of our clinical hours which would lighten the clinical load in fall of year 3 . The summer between year 3-4 we were in internships full time...

If you're taking $20k a semester that comes out to around $160k over 4 years of OD school. Did you also bring in $90k in student loans from undergrad? $250k in student loans is definitely something you want to lean into hard once you graduate especially if your interest rate is around 5-6%

My situation with Target Optical was amazing. My boss loved that I would close each night and most of the time from 7-9pm I was just studying. Sunday was from Noon-5pm and again it was mostly studying. There were times that I would work less because I wanted more time to practice skills with...

Years 1-3 I worked around 30 hours per work. We usually had one day off (or nearly the whole day on Thursday) from classes. My work hours usually were Mon, Tues, Wed, Fri 6-9pm, Thursday/Saturdays 8 hrs each, and Sunday 5 hours. Total work week was 3+3+3+8+3+8 (sat) + 5 (sunday) = 33 hours...

After nearly 45 days my state will return to routine elective eyecare. Thankfully the state of Kansas has roughly 3 million people and were not hit as hard. I'm thankful I can afford to go slower and will be limiting my schedule from 9-5pm M-F with one hour time slots. No I/R CL teaches at this...

I think this pandemic will start to see a slight net migration from highly densely populated areas.