“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.”
Earlier this month, I attended the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (Fellows Linda Casser and Lynn Cyert are also OSF aficionados.) It’s true repertory theater across temporal domains both short- and long-term. It means that actors who join the Festival in minor roles move on to leads, then character roles, and, sometimes, leadership roles, as dictated by their talents, age, and experience. The water jug carrier in Julius Caesar becomes Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes King Lear. A single actor might play Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird one afternoon and Falstaff in the evening.
We all play many roles in our lives, too, no less so in the American Academy of Optometry. Our personal and professional roles evolve from new optometrist employed in a practice to “the new doctor who just bought into the practice” to the senior partner. We are professors teaching in classrooms and clinic in the morning, Kiwanis members at lunchtime, and mother/daughter/sister/friend after work. In the Academy, we begin as Fellow, then perhaps join the Admittance Committee or Research Committee, become a Diplomate in our chosen area of emphasis, chair a Committee, and then suddenly find ourselves on the Board of Directors. Academics start as Assistant Professors and move on to tenure and, eventually, elder states(wo)man status. Our Academy meetings become “my ‘Fellow’ meeting,” “The one where I became a _______ committee member,” “that’s where I finished my Diplomate in _________” or “the one after my first daughter was born.”
Join me in our Academy Festival. Move off your current plateau, and figure out your next aspirational role. If you are a Candidate, move your Fellowship application forward by finishing up that case report. If you are a Fellow, choose the Section and Diplomate Program to which you aspire, and get going! If you want to volunteer for the Academy, let me know. Write a paper for Optometry and Vision Science. Alert OVS editor Tony Adams to your expertise that might serve the journal as a reviewer. Donate to the American Optometric Foundation. With rare exception, there is no casting director governing how many roles or which roles you can play in a lifetime in our American Academy of Optometry, and there are many, many roles that will enrich your life.
