Chapter 125

Excerpt taken from “OSCEs again” – Last Edited on 9am on July 11th, 2021

I am fully awake and ready for the day. It’s time for the OSCEs again. This year I am feeling confident. I am waking up in the apartment of a friend who lives in Waterloo because this year the OSCEs are held at my school. It seems like an appropriate send off for the Waterloo School of Optometry. 

As for things I’m expecting? I’m still expecting everything to go wrong. Will there be stations with broken equipment? Very likely. Confusing and ambiguous questions? Most definitely. Horrendous COVID protocols? Absolutely. But my study group and I were prepared for this now. Dare I say, I don’t think anything can shake me today. I am feeling confident. I doubt I would fail again this time.

That being said…It is going to be awkward… Due to COVID, the spring administration got mixed in with the fall one and it’s looking like we’ll be doing the OSCEs with the year below us (2021s). The awkward part of this is that we are going to outed. Everyone will know who failed from our class in the year below us because we’ll all be tested at the same time. I know for some this will be a day full of self conscious shame. 

Fortunately for me, that self doubt was burned away from me when I did the NBEO part 1.  I survived that and this means, I can survive anything. My mind has one thing set on it today. I need to pass and get my career going. 

Since North Carolina, I’ve been working less and less at [Clinic A] and have also been training my replacements (I told [Clinic A] I would be leaving when I’m done with the test). I sort of gambled a bit on my passing the test there. Hopefully it all goes to plan…But working less also means that my bank account is looking pretty empty. I mean…sure…I was just earning minimum wage at [Clinic A] but still, a little money is a little money and I have bills to pay. 

Okay okay…so I do have a few doubts…like… What if there is something that I don’t know that I don’t know. What if there was some specific point in the exam that I wasn’t aware about and forgot to mention? I know I know the material but what use is that in an unfair test? A few questions missing from a sheet of paper in the room was not unheard of after all. Hell, we experienced it even in the last OSCEs. 

Yeah… okay… Let’s not go any further on that train of thought. It’s not time to do that. Let me just prepare for the test and run over some final notes. 

Just need to keep my head in the game…

Entry Over

Soooooo yeah…

OSCEs time (again) and as I mentioned, it was in Waterloo this year. I wish I could tell you all that the OSCEs have changed and that it was much more fair this time around but to be honest, it was about the same. The stations we complained about last year were still problematic this year. The equipment failures from last time were still broken this time. Even the venue being something that was familiar to everyone didn’t help. If I had to really summarize it, I’d say the only thing that felt different was my classmates. 

My fellow 2020 classmates, who had been hardened in mind and infuriated by the outcome of the last round of OSCEs, all came prepared for every scenario. My small foursome study group was not the only study group that was made. I am certain others did the same to better their odds and to cope with everything. This really paid off. When we went in expecting the sh*tstorm, it made us ready for it. 

We went in, did our parts and then a few months down the line…I am very happy to announce that …

WE ALL PASSED this time around! 

The 2020s were done with Waterloo officially! Our last test before practice entrance appropriately being in Waterloo felt biblical and we now felt like champions. The larger group chat made by the courageous classmate who rallied all the OSCE re-takers roared with happiness and congratulations all around. 

WE’RE DONE! No More OEBC! 

We were all ecstatic and happy to be finally moving on. I immediately got my license registration sorted out after the fact and also completed the training for my replacement at Clinic A. I thanked Clinic A for their support and then went off on my own, making sure to give the office manager my number just in case they were ever hiring any optometrists in the future. 

A short while later, the group chat of OSCE re-takers got some news. As it turns out, the year below us, the class of 2021’s, found themselves in a similar situation as we had last year. That is to say, a larger than normal amount of failed candidates. Since all the records of the OSCEs are published online, you can see that while our class had an abnormally high number of failures, it was still lower than the 2021s. 

I don’t think they were to blame for this either. I think they had the same justifications as our class did when we did our OSCEs the first time. If anything, this makes it worse because it means the OSCEs didn’t improve anything even after our classmates complained about specifics. 

Some of the 2021’s reached out to me (they saw me at the OSCEs and recognized me) and asked for any advice I may have for someone in their situation and as soon as I saw how depressed they were, I felt sympathetic to their cause. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to help. The only thing I could do was offer some advice. 

I told them to avoid the man peddling hope and don’t pay for any rescoring or appeals. It’s going to be money down the drain. After that, I wished them luck and told them it would be a good idea to form a study group to run through not only the materials but also scenarios where the examination may be unfair. The experience is horrible but with more people it’s better and at the very least, they have a reasonable period of wait time before the next OSCEs (no more COVID delays). 

It’s hard to say what may have happened after that but I’d like to be positive about this. After the 2021’s did their retests, the years afterwards would rebound to having the OSCE’s pass rate in the 90%+ again. Choosing to be optimistic, I’m going to believe that hopefully something got fixed and that the test is now more fair. 

(Though I won’t be able to prove any of this).

Regardless, in the fall of 2021, I found myself at the beginning of my career as an optometrist and the de facto end of my time in schooling and testing. It was refreshing and it was all looking up. With that in mind, I walked into my new world with an open mind.

Surely there would be no more setbacks from here…

Right?