BE THERE OR BE SQUARE

Anticipation is at least half the fun. Right now, we’re anticipating our Academy’s Annual Meeting in Boston, October 11-15. You’re putting the finishing touches on your lecture or talk, picking up your poster from the printer, choosing your dress and shoes for the banquet, or finalizing your schedule. But, how will you hold up once you’re there? How long will you stay, especially on Saturday, the last day of the meeting?

To provide perspective: everybody knows about Woodstock. It was one of the first and one of the largest outdoor rock festivals, held on Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York in August 1969. It was before the Internet, Facebook, or Twitter, yet roughly half a million people headed there, undoubtedly with eager anticipation. The last act on the last day was guitarist Jimi Hendrix. His performance is legendary and included his iconic version of The Star-Spangled Banner and Purple Haze. Too bad for the many who left early; only about 80,000 people were still there for his performance. (Admittedly it was nine hours after his scheduled midnight appearance.)

Our iconic Academy meeting used to end with scientific papers. Fellow Tom Raasch loves to tell his story of the last paper presentation on the last day. As he approached the podium, the audience comprised one man Tom didn’t know, his best friend and best man, Fellow Peter Bergenske, and the session moderator. As Tom approached the podium, the one “real” audience member left the room, yet Tom gave a Hendrix-worthy performance for the moderator and Peter.

As I head to Boston, I plan on experiencing everything our Academy has to offer. I will muster my stamina yet feel like there’s always something going on in the meeting room next door that I’m missing and vow to see next year. I will stroll, not run, through the posters, stop to talk to old and new colleagues alike, and experience all the Exhibit Hall has to offer.

As you take off for Boston, make your plans to stay until the end. Look at the offerings on Saturday afternoon, and choose the lecture you’ll attend to finish out the meeting. Remember that your full registration includes a banquet ticket, so pack your finery and plan on being there to see the new Fellows walk proudly across the stage and announce their professional affiliations. Who knows what will happen if you don’t. You might miss a Raasch or a Hendrix or the one thing Academy members will talk about for years to come...

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WHO’S YOUR MENTOR?

     Late last month, I had the distinct pleasure of attending the summer quarter graduation ceremony at Ohio State, where 1,922 degrees were granted. I was there because I was scheduled to hood my seventh PhD student, Fellow Kathryn Richdale, but I was almost as proud to watch Fellow Eric Ritchey receive his PhD degree, too. I hosted a dinner for Kathryn the night before that included colleagues from optometry and radiology, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of Kathryn’s work on ocular magnetic resonance imaging with a 7 Tesla magnet. The whole weekend got me thinking about my own PhD graduation from UC Berkeley in 1992 when Fellow/AAO Past-President/AOF Immediate Past-President/OVS editor/UC Berkeley Dean Emeritus (wow!) and my PhD advisor, Tony Adams, hooded Fellow Don Mutti and me. It was a magical late spring day in northern California, and the ceremony was conducted within the shadow of the iconic Campanile on the Berkeley campus. The day culminated in a celebration at Don’s parents’ home with family, children, friends, and Berkeley optometry classmates, laughter, tears, and even a homemade beer, “Graduation Ale.” We all have mentors. They advise us on work, life, health, and what book we should read next. They tell us what they think would be good for us and what might represent bad choices or decisions. They behave like grown-ups when we can’t or won’t. Their advice isn’t perfect, and we can generally take it or leave it, but it’s amazing how often they turn out to have been correct, at least in hindsight. They are different than friends and even different than parents--more vested in our achievements and often more disappointed in our stumbles. Perhaps your mentor was a favorite teacher or particularly tough clinical attending in optometry school. He may be someone who has provided you spiritual guidance. She may be a senior partner in your practice or an optometrist you worked for right out of school. In addition to Tony Adams, I was mentored very early in my career by Mark Mannis, now the Chair of the University of California, Davis Department of Ophthalmology. Somehow he heard that I became the President of the Academy in San Francisco and had flowers delivered to my office shortly after the meeting. I called him on Thanksgiving morning last year to thank him for the flowers and told him that he was what Kathryn sometimes calls me (on a good day), “the mentor of my heart.” Think about your own mentors for a minute, those of your heart, mind, or soul. Initiate contact with them; email, write, or text your mentors and protégés. If you haven’t been in touch in a while, update him on your achievements and current challenges. If you see her all the time, say thank you. If you mentor others, renew those efforts. Make her a priority today. Provide the feedback you know he needs but have had a hard time finding the words to deliver. If your partner in a mentoring relationship is attending the Annual Meeting in Boston, make arrangements now for a coffee date or meal so that your interaction is more than a wave and a smile on passing escalators. In either role—mentor or protégé—let the others know you value them in your life. If you want to learn more about mentoring and leadership, and perhaps spend some time at the Annual Meeting in Boston reflecting on these topics, register for the 2011 Merton C. Flom Leadership Insight Courses. There are two Fundamentals of Leadership courses, “What is Leadership?” and “Putting Leadership into Action,” and there’s an Intermediate Leadership Course, “How Navigating through Peaks and Valleys in the Present Can Help Make You a More Effective Leader.” P.S. To all of you who emailed or Facebooked me after last month’s column, I so appreciated it. Some of you wanted to be sure I was recovering; others cautioned me about future bicycling. A couple of you responded to the column’s encouragement, saying “Did you bug my office?” or “This is just what I needed.” Thanks to all of you. I’m fine, although I think I may always have a lumpy left temple, and I’m cycling again. Now, get back to those case reports!
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WHEN THE ROAD COMES UP TO MEET YOU

 

So there I was on a gorgeous Saturday morning in early August: bike riding from Boston to Cape Cod on my sixth Pan Massachusetts Challenge (PMC), a two-day, 160-mile, 31-year-old, 5000-cyclist event that benefits the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University. (I know you might be wondering why a girl from Ohio rides in Massachusetts. I can only tell you that Fellow David Troilo, Dean at the SUNY State College of Optometry, got me into it seven years ago.) I’d already done Academy work that weekend, talking with Fellow Don Korb and Past President Joan Exford about Academy 2011 Boston plans on the way to New England in the car, and I was trying to come up with an idea for this column as I rode.

On the first day, I made my way into the lunch stop in Rehoboth, Massachusetts and saw a large group of cancer patient advocates/ride supporters wearing t-shirts that said, “Smile. It’s Today.” I figured I had my inspirational topic for this month. Then life/fate/happenstance threw me a curve.

The next day, 38 miles into the 80-mile ride on Cape Cod, having navigated successfully over the Bourne Bridge at 5:00 A.M. and already up one of the more challenging hills, I found myself in an ambulance on the way to Cape Cod Hospital. I “woke up” there, after spending several minutes unconscious, asking to call my husband and obsessively worried about the condition and location of my bicycle. I have no recollection of the accident, but the PMC folks later told me that a rider went down on damp pavement just in front of me, and five of us piled up after him. I suffered a concussion that blackened both eyes plus some pretty dramatic bruising on my left hip and a bit of road rash on various limbs. My helmet was cracked all the way through. I know what my late mother would have said: “She never suffered a concussion on my watch!”

I went on to a planned week’s vacation with my family and friends on Nantucket Island after that. I replaced my helmet at a local bike store there and rode, somewhat gingerly and with more than a little fear, 50 miles over the familiar roads and bike paths on the island, and I reflected on the decisions we all make when we get thrown a curve—on the bike route, at work, in life, or in our Academy.

What if you’ve put forth your very best effort on your required case report for Fellowship, and you get feedback that it just isn’t quite right or even that it needs a complete overhaul? You could “take your ball and go home,” declaring to anyone who will listen that your case report was perfect even as your Fellowship candidacy expires. I would argue that you could instead look at the comments from the Admittance Committee, revise your case report, and resubmit it. What if the manuscript you submitted to Optometry and Vision Science needs extensive revision, and you disagree with the reviewers and Topical Editor about those revisions? Again, you could put the manuscript and the reviews in the darkest corner of your computer where you’ll never see them again, or you could prepare a detailed response to each criticism, either making the suggested revision or carefully providing the scientific rationale for why the criticism is incorrect. What if your leadership efforts in your Section, Special Interest Group, or Committee feel stymied or unappreciated? You could decide to walk away from that particular endeavor, or you could talk with the other people involved and try to figure out a better way to move your objectives forward or to adapt those objectives to the abilities and aspirations of the people you’re leading. How you respond to obstacles on the road is always up to you.

By the way, I am well on the road to recovery, two weeks after the accident. I had to forgo a similar charity ride at Ohio State this past weekend, and I finally gave into my headaches and dizziness and slept for an entire day late last week. This morning, the bruises on my face were actually almost amenable to make-up to cover them. I learned from my primary care physician about an online concussion score sheet and that my greater-than-usual swings of emotion are to be expected. I also learned to be resilient, grateful, motivated, and alive.
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OUR MANY PARTS

From As You Like It:
“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.
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PRIDE IN THE NAME OF...OPTOMETRY

I am writing this as I sit in the Denver airport on my way home from the AOA meeting in Salt Lake City. The meeting felt historic, memorable, and tear-inducing, as Dori Carlson, OD, FAAO became the first woman to become president of the AOA. She gave the Academy an enthusiastic shout out in her first speech as President as she described the representation of women leaders in optometry in 2011, including Tone Garaas-Maurdalen, FAAO, president of the World Council of Optometry; Kirsten North, OD, president of the Canadian Association of Optometrists; and concluding with, as Dori put it, “my friend, Dr. Karla Zadnik, president of the American Academy of Optometry.” I was there because I was proud of her; she seemed proud of me.

I found other evidence of pride about Academy fellowship in connection with the AOA. The majority of the AOA 2011-12 Board of Trustees are Fellows of our Academy. President-Elect Ron Hopping, OD, MPH, FAAO, is a Fellow and Diplomate in the Section on Cornea, Contact Lenses, and Refractive Technologies. An erudite presentation on third party payment was given by Drs. Stephen Montaquila and Bobby Jarrell in the AOA House of Delegates, with their FAAO designations proudly displayed on their talk’s title slide for all to see. LaMar Zigler, OD, MS, FAAO, who I just ran into at the gate in Denver became the 2011-12 Chair of the AOA’s Contact Lens & Cornea Section. In the final session of the House of Delegates, “Good and Welfare” items included descriptions of both the AOA meeting in Chicago in 2012 and the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Academy in Boston.

Then, this morning at 5:30 am in the Salt Lake City airport, I overheard an optometrist I didn’t know describing his practice setting to another optometrist. He was praising the abilities of his two junior partners and, in giving a shorthand version of their resumes, declared, “You know, residency-trained, top of their class, Academy, best of the best. . .”

We are like the pride of lions in The Lion King. We may sometimes have interests that seem to be at odds or competitive in nature, but we are ultimately all engaged for the common good of the optometric profession. It was evident in Salt Lake City and will be equally evident in Boston in October that we are all much, much more similar than different. What is that common ground? Whether Academy Fellow, Academy Diplomate, or a doctor aspiring to those achievements as soon as he or she finds the time to pursue them, we are all proud to be optometrists.
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LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: REGISTRATION, REGISTRATION, REGISTRATION!

Imagine you're a professor at an optometry school. You enter your classroom with a bundle of midterm examinations in your hand, running a little late because you've been having a spirited scientific discussion with a former student. As you enter the room less than five minutes before the start of the midterm, you hear the sound of a few pairs of hands clapping. Soon, the entire room applauds, and the sound of that applause builds to a crescendo before stopping. You can hardly fathom what's happening. Are these students so appreciative of your teaching skill that they applaud BEFORE an exam? Are they being sarcastic because you're running so late? Do they applaud routinely for any little thing?

No, as with many things, it turns out to be about location, location, location. Their class was rescheduled to a nicer classroom, and they think you're responsible, even though it was a central administrative decision, hence your raucous accolades.

The Academy meeting benefits from location, too. Because the Academy meeting moves around, it’s not like Groundhog Day. It means that I remember that I became a Fellow in St. Louis and that the Steve Grant, Glenda Secor, Joe Shovlin, Joe Barr, and Jeff Dougal crowd became Diplomates in Denver. A memorable Academy meeting can be inextricably associated with its location.

Our record-breaking meeting attendance in San Francisco in 2010 is attributable in no small part to that magical city. Well, there’s more magic on the way! This year, the meeting is in one of the most vibrant of American cities: Boston. Earlier this week, AOA Board member and Academy Fellow, Mitch Munson, (and, it turns out, past Neumueller awardee!) sighed, “Boston is my favorite city.” It's got history, food, walkability, sightseeing, lovely autumn weather ... all components worthy of a long, loud round of applause.

But it's also got content. If you are considering sitting for a Board Certification examination anytime soon, check out the schedule for Academy 2011 Boston. All the categories outlined by the American Board of Optometry are represented in the Boston scientific papers, Section symposia, lectures, and workshops, several times over. It’s a four-day comprehensive review course in a beautiful city, and it happens every autumn! Who knew? You all do.

So, you’ve heard me. Fabulous location, great science, comprehensive education, and unparalleled camaraderie with your favorite optometrists and vision scientists. What should you do? Go to the registration page for registration, registration, registration. See you for a cup of chowdah and countless rounds of applause!
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WHEN GREAT TREES FALL. . .AND WHERE THEIR SEEDS LAND

Two momentous passages already in 2011 have me reflecting on the influence individuals can have on the greater good.

On the occasion of his recognition as the 2011 Nathaniel E. Springer Memorial Lecturer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry earlier this month, The Ohio State University College of Optometry’s EF Wildermuth Professor of Optometry, Don Mutti, attended the dinner in his honor, hosted by UAB’s new Dean, Rod Nowakowski. The event was particularly poignant, as Donald A. Springer, a President of our Academy in 1963 and 1964, passed away earlier this year, and Nathaniel Springer was Dr. Springer’s optician father. Dr. Springer is widely recognized as the founder of the UAB School of Optometry. Other attendees at the dinner included Mrs. Rita Springer. Don asked Mrs. Springer how it occurred to Dr. Springer to place a new optometric institution in the southeast at a major academic institution where there was also a medical school. Unprompted and without knowing that Don had an abiding connection to the Academy, Mrs. Springer said that her husband had just been elected to the Academy’s Executive Council in 1954 and that he was deeply inspired by the Academy and its aspirations of excellence for the optometric profession. That inspiration led him to aim high by imagining a School of Optometry at UAB; the rest is history.

The other passage also reflects connections to the Academy in a giant’s accomplishments. Founding director of the National Eye Institute, Carl Kupfer, passed away early this month. Paul Sieving, current NEI director, said of him, “Creating an NIH institute from whole cloth is a daunting task, but Carl had a vision for the NEI and persevered to make it a reality. He was dedicated to clinical research and the development of clinician scientists. He believed in the primacy of investigator-initiated research. The NEI and the vision research community are a lasting legacy of Carl’s 30 years of service.” Dr. Kupfer was the Fry awardee in 1981 and received an Honorary Fellowship Academy designation in 1997. At the 1997 meeting in San Antonio, Dr. Kupfer spoke at the American Optometric Foundation’s 50th anniversary luncheon. His remarks were summarized in the AOF’s annual report by then-President Sarita Soni: “Dr. Kupfer acknowledged the fact that AOF has made major contributions to vision research through its Ezell fellowship program. He noted a number of Ezell fellows who have received NEI research awards over the years [now including 1997 Ezell fellows Brad Fortune and Kelly Nichols née Kinney] and thus contributed to our improved understanding of visual processes and disorders of the visual system. Dr. Kupfer went on to share his excitement and hope that optometry graduates, with support from NEI and AOF, may continue to work with basic scientists to seek answers to clinical questions that are important to the practitioner.” That’s Today’s Research, Tomorrow’s Practice®.

From When Great Trees Fall, by Maya Angelou:
“And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed. “
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