Boards Update

Well I took the boards on Tuesday and Wednesday. In total there were 500 questions divided into 4 tests with 125 questions each. The test basically covered everything I've learned during the past three years of optometry school. I had 3 1/2 hours to complete each test with a 1 hour break for lunch in between tests.

The exam was important to Emilee and me for a few reasons:
1) Each state requires you pass it to in order to be granted a license to practice optometry.
2) Nova Southeastern University requires you pass it in order to graduate from the school.
3) Board scores have a big influence on a residency placement. Higher scores make you more competitive.

I feel like things went well for me. As Emilee said in the previous post, I wasn't nervous, but rather anxious to start. I arrived early and went over a few last minute things, mostly optics equations that I had learned back in 2006 and haven't used since. Classmates slowly began to trickle in and then it was time to go check in and find your assigned seat in the auditorium. At this point most people were pretty nervous and you could almost feel it in the room. We were seated in the middle of a large auditorium that was built in 1950. Imagine sitting in the middle of the basketball court in the movie Hoosiers, that's what it looked like; even the lighting looked like it was straight from the 50s.

The test was administered the same way most standardized test are, with the proctor reading from a script for 10 minutes before you can break the seal on the test. "Do not begin until instructed to do so..." and "Read the directions to yourself as I read them aloud..." By the time the fourth test was administered I had it all memorized.

I broke the seal and began to take the first test. The questions were multiple choice and weren't too difficult, It seemed to me that there was a correct answer but also a very intriguing distractor placed there to cause you to doubt the correct answer. After a while I looked up at the clock and saw that I had been taking the test for an hour. I then looked at my test and saw I was only on question #41; only 84 more questions to go. Barf.

The optometrists who wrote the test questions really try to throw you off your game. They will give you five optics questions in a row then throw a crazy pharmacology question in there just as you are in optics mode. I guess they want to see how well you can switch gears from one subject to another. Are you Jeff Gordon or Ricky Bobby (the crazy Ricky Bobby who was just released from the mental hospital)?

After I finished the first test I exited the auditorium and went outside. Naturally everyone wanted to talk about the most important test in our lives thus far. Not me. I didn't want to talk about it at all. The reason? I didn't want to hear some random classmate say that I missed a question on the test. No one wanted to talk about the easy questions that everyone got correct, they wanted to debate difficult questions that no one was even sure what the correct answer was. It drives me crazy when I turn on SportsCenter and the topic of debate is, Who would win in a seven-game series, the '96-'97 Bulls or the 07-'08 Celtics? No one really knows the answer for sure, so why debate it? Same thing applies to the boards. No one really knows for sure what some of the answers to those difficult questions are, so why worry about it?

So I politely avoided discussing the test and went to Subway for lunch. I ordered a $5 footlong Italian BMT sub and wolfed it down like it was my last meal. After lunch I made my way back to War Memorial Auditorium to take part two of the test, I started to get nervous; not because I had to resume taking the test, but because I ate an entire 12 inch Italian sandwich. What was I thinking? Did I want to get heartburn or an upset stomach? I started planning my exit strategy should the unthinkable happen and I needed to use the bathroom. But luckily, I felt fine for the duration of part two of the test. Speaking of food, I was assigned the first seat at the front of the auditorium. When the test was passed out I received the top copy which came with a greasy fingerprint of the cover. I guess proctors get hungry too.

Part two began and ended for me in about three hours. I couldn't believe how exhausted, both physically and mentally, I was after finishing. Emilee came and picked me up and took me to a really cool ice cream parlor in Dania Beach called Jaxsons. It's been rated one of the top ten ice cream parlors in the nation. They make all of their ice cream from scratch and even make and their own sodas too (the root beer was awesome). We ate a hot dog and a sundae and then headed home.

That night it rained like crazy, I mean monsoon type rain. I was worried that the power would go out and the alarm wouldn't work, so I set my cell phone alarm too just in case.

I arrived the next morning at the auditorium for day two of boards. Traffic was bad due to the rain still coming down. The parking lot (if you can call it that) is a patch of dirt and weeds adjacent to the building. I parked but realized that I was in the middle of a huge puddle; I may as well have parked in Lake Michigan. I hopped and tip-toed my way out of the water, but not before completely soaking my socks. As I entered the building you could hear my shoes squish-squashing on the tile floor. I don't know about you, but it drives me crazy to have wet socks. I would have made a poor soldier or pioneer.

The second day of testing was much like the first. One difference was the downpour of rain on the metal roof of the building made for some dull background noise. I finished the test, ate a burrito for lunch (I know, spicy food again; not a smart move), then sat down to take the fourth and final test. Midway through that test I started to get a pounding headache, but I sucked it up and finally finished.

Glaukomfleken. What a funny word. Sounds like a German curse word; like maybe something you'd hear Hitler yell in a World War II documentary on the History Channel. It was actually an answer choice for one of the questions. I had no idea what the answer was to that particular questions, but I chose glaukomfleken as the answer (because none of the other answers made sense) and I have since learned that it was indeed the correct choice. There were number of questions like that, questions for which I didn't know the answer but I was able to logically guess the answer by a process of elimination.

Anyway, when I was all said and done, I left the auditorium with my headache and went home to rest. Again, I was completely exhausted and just wanted to go home and stare at the TV. So how did I do? I don't know for sure and won't receive my score until sometime in the middle of May. However, I'm cautiously optomistic that I did well enough to pass and I thank you for all of the thoughts and prayers you said in my behalf. I'll post again once I receive my scores and let you know if I performed like Ricky Bobby or more like the Rainbow Warrior (that's a Jeff Gordon reference for those of you not familiar with NASCAR).