Chapter 105

I kind of figured my day as a Waterloo student would end up walking down the graduation ceremonies in a gown. I expected it to be similar to when I graduated from undergrad. I would get a gown for free from my boss at the Waterloo retail store then go to the university gymnasium of our university with my fellow science classmates to walk on stage to receive a fake diploma they use for photos. This is how I expected my send off from Waterloo to be. Instead…my final days as a Waterloo student were rather different. As a matter of fact, they wouldn’t even be in Waterloo. They would be in Downtown Toronto at a location next to the Sunnybrook Hospital called the Canadian National Institute for the blind (or CNIB for short). 

Around the 2nd or 3rd week post March 13th, 2020, I made a trip home to Toronto to start unloading some stuff. While some classmates of mine still stuck around near the university in hopes that it’ll reopen, I saw the writing on the wall. 

During this time, there was only one question that everyone was gunning for an answer to. How do we make up for the missing clinical hours? In the US, some of the Optometry schools had simply chosen to not require the missing clinical hours from their students. While this seemed like the students were missing out a bit of education, it at least sped things along so that students can get on with their lives. Waterloo did not do this. That would’ve been too easy.

In Waterloo’s eyes, there was NOTHING that could replace the precious clinical hours done in actual practice. However, there was also NOTHING they were willing to do to allow students into the clinic either. This meant that there was now a stand still. No news was happening. The only thing that was certain was that Waterloo did not accept anything in place of the clinical hours missed. 

However, they couldn’t keep this up forever. I mean, our class needed to graduate. There were two things for practice entrance. One was a degree from Waterloo and the other was to pass the OSCE’s. Both were currently up in the air but the graduation part was much more within reach. As term continued and the Grand Rounds presentations ended, our class grew restless. In our eyes, the faculty and coordinators at school were just sitting on their thumbs on top of their high horses providing nothing for those who depend on them. 

Then, finally, around the time when the end of the term was coming up, we got news. It was news that was kind of disconnected from logic. The exact words of the email was something along the lines of this:

“Waterloo values clinical experience above all else and nothing can replace it. Therefore, we’re going to give everyone in the class an online multiple choice exam.”

For those wondering how an online MCQ test was supposed to help the students of the optometry school meet the clinical requirements of graduating from our program…the answer is it doesn’t. This seemed like an unnecessary hoop for our class to jump through. Why do this? This was kind of a waste of time for everyone involved. If an online test would never tell you about someone’s clinical skills, why are we being tested on it in place of clinical skills? 

The most popular theory was that the school just wanted to say that they did “something” during this whole COVID thing but this pissed all of us off. Instead of implementing any real actionable measure to continue working in the clinic, the school had simply decided to “make an online exam.” What the hell? How did they come to this? 

Now, in all fairness, no one in the world was expecting COVID to be as big of a phenomenon as it was. However, with all the inefficient methods deployed by the school, it was hard to argue that our school was on our side or doing anything meaningful or logical. Our class wanted answers. We wanted to know if there was meaning behind the hoops the students were forced to hop through. Were some arbitrary standards that were never disclosed which were needed to graduate a class? That would at least make the entire situation more understandable. 

Despite all the complaining, there was nothing our class could do except express to our supervisors our discontent. Once the anger towards the fact that there would be an hours-long online MCQ test wore off, things settled down. For a whole hour or so. Then it spiraled up again when we got told that for this MCQ test that there would be no syllabus. Meaning they could test us on whatever they wanted. In the exact words of the school. The materials tested are “things we should all know.” What the hell does that mean? You’re seriously telling us that you’re giving us an exam that we have to pass to graduate and then telling us you won’t reveal the topics tested? The only information we ended up getting was that the exam was to be 4 hours long and 200 questions. That was it. 

In the end, we all ended up taking the examination. While we were disgruntled, having this last test to graduate meant it would be the last thing we had to deal with. It was stupid but we all went along with it since so we just didn’t want to deal with Waterloo anymore. We’re tired of the faculty and have lost all respect for them. The entire relationship was now transactional. In my journal I wrote down what I thought was the sentiment of the class.

“Tell me what kind of sick power trip you need to fulfill today at my expense and get it over with.”

At this time I also recalled googling if it was possible to write negative numbers on the alumni donation request letters.

At around the time when the term was officially meant to end, our test results all got revealed. Luckily, everyone passed. With that, our class was treated to an email from the secretary congratulating all of us for passing and now, officially graduating from Waterloo. Yup, that’s right. The Optometry Program was going to end with an email. That was all. 4 years of our lives that were supposed to be the most transformative in our careers and futures was done with an email. How very typical of the COVID scene. However it came to be, our last saga of the Einsteins class ended. Well…Sort of…

If I had to describe the mood of our class with regards to the graduation, I’d say it was mixed. Most of us were happy that we no longer had to deal with Waterloo anymore. But some, I felt, kind of knew that the way things were left with our class and the school kind of tainted how our 4 years went. We all started off as starry eyed individuals trying to reach for our dreams of a career we can be happy and proud of. I mean our class was 90 students chosen from an entire country, it was a program that was hard to get into. If you got in you must have wanted it. But then our class got treated like crap and even came to be known as “cursed.” All of which ended with the COVID at graduation time. Throughout all of this, I think my class got more cynical than how we initially started. We were done but we didn’t leave unscathed. 

I think the greatest tragedy our class got as the 2020’s was that graduating during COVID meant we didn’t ever get to come back together to feel like a class after third year. The curse we had from all the crap we went through was horrible but misery always feels better when you have company. However, we never got to get back into each other’s company after third year. COVID isolated us all. The setting of being at different clinics and no longer in classes during fourth year meant that post-third year, we basically never saw most of our classmates outside of that one term back at Waterloo. Graduation was meant to be our last time together with everyone. But it never came to be. 

All we got were a few emails the school sent us and a virtual graduation. I think this is probably the worst of being a class of 2020. It was that we missed out on the core memory of graduating together. For most of us, this was the last step before our careers kicked off and that meant it was our last time to be students too. To put it another way, this was our scene before we became adults. 

It’s kind of tragic in its own way but what can you do? This was way larger than us. 

Now, while this seems like the end of the road, we aren’t necessarily yet. For my class, they still had the OSCE’s to do. The OSCE’s, which at this point had been officially delayed indefinitely, was the last barrier before practice entrance. With Waterloo, we all celebrated briefly. Then, it was on to the next and least thing on the list. It was OSCE’s time. Well…sort of. As I mentioned, you can’t really study for OSCE’s that well. Not only is the Canadian OSCE’s syllabus all over the place but we don’t even have a date on when to do it either yet. So technically, after celebrating graduation, it was time to go back into limbo. 

For myself, you’d think that I could take a breather too but that was not the case at all. This is because in the perfectly logical supreme rationale of the Optometry school, I still needed to do my Hong Kong hours. That’s right, everyone else had hours forgiven but since I had extra left over from the previous term that weren’t forgiven. Because of this, I was told that I would need to make up for it in the next term. In turn, this meant that I would not be graduating with the rest of my class and would be graduating by myself the term afterwards. 

Now, you may think that because of all the bad blood that has arisen from our class and the coordinators in the last months of the winter term that I’d be furious about this outcome. But that’s not the case. In truth, I was actually pretty okay with this. While it seemed unfair. I knew that I had missed a LOT of clinical hours. 

In terms of clinical experience, I was shy about 3 months worth of it total. Sure, 2 months of that was COVID for which the school wrote off but I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was my training. Let’s be clear about where my mind was. I wanted to do that extra term. My end goal was and always has been to graduate as a competent doctor. This wasn’t about what was fair, it was about how prepared I would be after school. 

This doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry at Waterloo but I think it’s critical I express why I was angry. I was never angry at not being forgiven for the clinical hours missed due to Hong Kong nor COVID. I was always angry at Waterloo for the red tape they gave me for trying to make up the clinical hours. Or… to put it another way, I never hated Waterloo for not forgiving the hours I missed. I hated how Waterloo made it so hard for me to do those hours. At the end of the day, I wanted to be a capable doctor and I felt like all the time missed from the clinic made me ill prepared for that. Sure it sucked to graduate later but I would rather have that then to be incompetent at my job in the future.

While everyone else celebrated, I emailed the supervisors back and forth to set up my last rotation to finish up my hours. When they told me that if I wanted to, I could stay at the site for pretty much the entire term as a regular, I decided to take it. In total, I had missed 7 weeks of clinic from the entire Hong Kong fiasco and around 8 weeks due to COVID. Seeing as how this was almost a full term’s worth of clinic in number alone, I decided to just do the full term. 

One other point to consider was that at this point, since no one in my class was going to be working legally with a license, being in the clinic wasn’t such a bad gig. Some of my classmates had to ask their local optometrist office if they could go in just to make sure they can practice their skills while awaiting the OSCE’s. 

As for the clinic that I was assigned, it was with a Low Vision clinic in downtown Toronto that had ties to the Canadian National Institute of the Blind (CNIB). And this is how it came to be that I would spend the last four months of my time as a Waterloo student in downtown Toronto and CNIB. 

I took this term very seriously. It was my last term as an intern and I wanted the most out of it. In my mind, I was trying to make up for all the missed time I had.