Winter Break: I have two weeks of freedom, yay! At the beginning of a vacation I find myself dreaming of all the things I want to do, and overwhelmed with what to start with. Before I know it, the vacation is over already, lol. I always fear that happening to me because it’s pretty common. But currently, I have to say sipping my hot chocolate while blogging and listening to some Spotify is nice. :)

Contact Lens Lab: For my contact lens lab, we have to fabricate a hard contact lens ourselves as a project. While I was working on it, I left my work bench to empty the bowl of water in the sink. When I went back to work on my contact lens, I couldn’t find it. I ended up dejectedly cleaning up in resignation. As a last resort I dug through the trash. Yep, the contact lens was stuck on a piece of tissue paper in the trash. LOL. At least I found it. If I really lost it, I’d have to wait until I can talk to my professor to get a new lens to work on.

We had our contact lens proficiency during the week. It involved hard contact lens analysis, keratometry (measuring the curvature of the eye with an instrument), and lid eversions (flipping the eyelid inside out to look at the underside of the eyelid and top of the eyeball). If it sounds scary, it is…at first. After having to practice it so many times I got used to it. It doesn’t hurt at all but it’s an odd feeling. Especially when your classmates are learning it for the first time, there’s a lot of finger slipping and eyelids bouncing back to hit the eye, eyelid pinching, eyeball poking. Lol.

I was also not blessed with long eyelashes, so my short eyelashes posed a challenge for my classmates. Rumors spread around about my difficult eyelids and I think that caused a panic among my classmates. When we have proficiencies, we are randomly paired up with a labmate. Once I put on mascara, my lashes were much more manageable but the fear was already instilled among my classmates so the girl who had me freaked out on the proficiency. I think no matter how scary or difficult something may be, confidence and calmness is super important in not botching the whole thing.

Yay, Extra Credit: I decided to go to class today (it was our last day of class before 2 weeks of winter break) and my professor told us he wanted a picture of everyone because everyone who showed up today will receive extra credit! Lol! Didn’t expect that at all, but that was a nice treat to coming in. It was funny because yesterday I was talking with a few classmates and posed the question, “So who’s showing up to class tomorrow?”.  My professor also likes to include a slide on his powerpoint with upcoming birthdays in the next week. I was the only person on the list who showed up so when he asked in desperation, “Is ANYONE on this list here?” I waved my arms around enthusiastically.

Quick Date: After class, Mart & I did some last minute shopping for his coworkers, ate some tasty ramen for dinner, and listened to a local band play some Christmas/swing/jazz music. We had to leave early because Mart had an event with the coworkers tonight, but it was a nice little date!