Optometric Insights 5 W’s are the “Who, What, When, Where and Why” practice. The first thing you need to answer is where.
Where do I Practice?
There are many opportunities and many great places that one can practice. One of the first things that I think you should consider is where you want to be with regards to your family, where you grew up, and to a spouse. Where do you want your children to grow up? If that is not in the forefront of your mind because you’re not married or you don’t have children, other things to consider are lifestyle and climate.
Do you want to work in a rural or urban area? Both of these have great opportunities but they’re very different from each other. Do you prefer a town of 20,000 people or one of 3 million? Like we said there are different advantages and disadvantages for each of these. Though it is not imperative to know exactly where you want to settle upon graduation optometry school, moving from a location a few years later – takes time away from the fundamental growth period of the practice of your dreams. Still, this time is not wasted, because it adds to your experience.
As optometry students we don’t want to be myopic when it comes to the long term. As students enter their fourth year, questions start to pop up in their head: “Do I want to work at retail?”, “Do I want to work at residency”, “What about my students loan?”. These are all valid questions which need to be addressed but the first thing that you really should consider is where you want to be.
