Chapter 61

After grandma’s funeral, I went back to Waterloo. It was almost time to start the new years in the new program. I now only had to worry about myself in a program that never failed anyone. This was going to be a breeze! Right? Right?? Well. Actually. NOT AT ALL. Remember the imposter syndrome tendencies I had? Yeah. Turns out. This would be the most commonly recurring theme of my education at UW Optom and will change me permanently in the end as a person. This was not something I thought nor expected when I first got into the program. Regardless, the next four years would prove to be some of the most transformative passages of my entire life.  

**Editor’s Note for Clarification: 

UW refers to the University of Waterloo

UW Optom refers to the University of Waterloo Optometry Program Students

UofT refers to the University of Toronto

ALSO! ALL MONEY VALUES ARE IN CAD

*Note Over*

Let’s get started.

In Optometry year 1, everyone was new. I had no prior knowledge of anyone because all my pool of friends had graduated into different fields. I think this is the curse of going into a program with only 90 people a year per country. It was very unlikely that you would be joining the program with your friends. Most of the class came from outside of Ontario and the rest came from the other universities of Ontario. 

I mentioned in brief that, despite the fact that UW Optom says they have no preferences for anyone who is applying based on which university they came from, there were a large handful of UW students. I remember thinking about this when I first met my classmates and with a quick look at everyone’s basic intro, it would seem that around a good 15-20% of the class were students of the University of Waterloo (UW).

Now that may not seem like a huge number but keep in mind that no other university had as large an influence on the class as UW students. Despite that, I knew nobody personally. I may have seen some of my classmates wandering around campus at some point in the past but honestly, I have never had a proper conversation with anyone from UW. They were basically all strangers and might as well have been from another university. 

Speaking of other universities, let’s talk a bit more about the distribution I was seeing. The other collective outside of the UW group was a handful of those who went to UofT (University of Toronto). To be honest, they weren’t really a collective. UofT had 3 different campuses and being a student of one meant you really didn’t see the students of another. All in all, they didn’t really stand out all that much and their numbers were significantly lower than the UW students count. After that? Nothing! It dawned on most people that it would appear as though most universities from across the country only had 1 or 2 people going into the Optometry program. This means that aside from the UW group, which was pretty much strangers but with a similar past, everyone else had pretty much no connection at all with anyone. 

Now, I’ve mentioned that in the past, the UW Optom admission committee does not play favorites with applicants from UW. This is true, however, there are definitely benefits to being a UW student applying into the UW Optom program. For starters, all the courses that were prerequisites for applying into the UW Optom program used UW science program courses as references. If you weren’t from UW, you sometimes had to take a look at the curriculum of the prerequisite courses and find an equivalent course to be used in your application. If you had a school that didn’t offer such a course? Tough luck. You’re going to have to take supplementary courses at another university or something of the like. 

Furthermore, UW students enjoyed the Tatum Center. You know? The interview center that knew about the UW Optom program and also held mock interviews for it? It was a marginal advantage but still one worth mentioning. What wasn’t marginal was the planting of roots. By this I mean that if you were going to spend 4 years of professional school in a university, it may not be such a bad idea to have already spent 4 years there to set up some friend groups and support systems. Personally, this was my biggest draw towards UW when I was thinking about my future in highschool. 

Thinking back, I was right about this too! I definitely had a dependency on the support systems I had made in undergrad. I mean, just look at all the music groups I joined! What I didn’t account for however, was that UW Optom would basically cause me to uproot most of the support I had. Time would become a much scarcer resource and limit my interaction with hobby groups. 

Furthermore, another 4 years in Waterloo would be needed and unfortunately, the girlfriend was gone off to Toronto. She had graduated and decided to pursue nursing back home. I couldn’t blame her, most of my other friends did something similar. My undergrad friends all graduated and went off to do their thing, including LP. I was now alone with the new UW Optom class of 2020. I didn’t enjoy this feeling. My only escape from this feeling of being left behind was the now dying UW Breakdancer’s club. This club still remained a low commitment drop in the group that accepted me whenever. It fit well with the scheduling of my courses I was about to experience in the upcoming year. This was pretty much all I had left. 

Knowing all of this made it hard to enjoy the beginning of the Optometry program but I eventually got over it. This is what I wanted after all. Can’t let the last four years of struggling amount to me just being depressed after achieving exactly what my goal was.

As Orientation Week for the Optometry Class of 2020 (Yes, I know) kicked off, I was pleasantly surprised with a warm welcome that could only happen when you are now worth something to the banks. That is to say, we got a sponsored Orientation Week with sponsored events. This made sense. There were so many possibilities for the future optometrists of our country. We were a stable bet for banks as a profession and thus, good investments. The banks also knew that we had an almost 0% drop out rate which means they can start sweetening us up right from the get go. In fact, the first thing on our agenda during Orientation Week was a chat with a ScotiaBank representative. They talked to us about offering pretty good rates for student loans to help us with our program.

I remembered this part well because during this time, money was on my mind. I knew that tuition was about to increase by a lot. The banks of course knew this too. ScotiaBank in particular was offering large loans for tuition that was rated somewhere around prime – 0.25%. This was pretty decent for us and I knew some of my classmates did in fact hop on the bandwagon cause they needed the money. The rate however, wasn’t anything particularly exciting. In fact, most banks, including CIBC and RBC, offered similar rates. ScotiaBank simply had gone the extra mile and came to our Orientation with a rep. Our class didn’t mind this at all. I mean, they did sponsor a lot of our events.

The main thing I took away from this was that I was now someone who had some standing in the eyes of the bank. I had made it to the other side. Banks wanted our numbers and unlike the plebs of undergrad students, now we were important to them. We were going to have financial power in the future and the banks wanted a piece. Unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t be able to reel me in. This is because Ontario students, of which I am one of, also got another avenue for money. This started a few years prior to when I got into the Optometry program and has to do with OSAP, the Ontario Student Assistance Program. The assumed circumstance was that they had very conveniently changed some of their grant policies. 

For the record, I’m not sure if this was because we were optometry students and OSAP liked us more or if this was a political stunt because Justin Trudeau had been elected prime minister a few years prior, but our Ontario classmates and myself started getting a lot of grants from OSAP. I’ve heard from the upper years that we’d be pretty well off from the grants alone but I hadn’t really realized what this meant until later on.

In all 4 years of undergrad, I had received a total of $4,000 in grants. That means out of all the loans I had accumulated throughout the entirety of undergrad, which by the start of optometry was around $28,000, I had to pay around $24,000 of it back. In contrast, now that I was an UW Optom student, for every $8,000 in student loans that was given to me, around $4,000 would be added as a grant. When I entered UW Optom, a survey showed that most of the UW Optom graduates that finished Optometry school with the help of OSAP had around $62,000 of student loans. If we assume they had an undergrad tuition similar to mine, that means in the four years they spent in Optometry school, they had accumulated about $34,000 of student loans only. 

Firstly, Optometry school costing around $34,000 for 4 years is ridiculous. Some of my undergrad friends who went off to do Optometry School in the US had student loans upon graduation at around $200,000 USD. Waterloo was cheap as dirt in comparison to that. Second, while tuition is cheap in comparison, it still wasn’t that cheap. I mean, in comparison to my undergrad, it was double. For every year, except for the last year of Optometry, the tuition was around $16,000 (for UW Optom 2016-2020) for two semesters. While that was a large amount of money, I was getting around $12,000 for OSAP in loans and grants. Usually only needing to pay back $8,000. This meant I could get by pretty easily with almost just OSAP alone. 

Still, this meant that every year, I would have to come up with around $8,000 to pay the tuition that still isn’t covered by OSAP. $8,000 a year is a pretty low bar and to be honest, even if I just worked during the summer, I probably would have made due. However, I do have to remind you that I no longer could be a lifeguard since all my licenses for that expired. Also, any money I previously had from lifeguarding was now dry from being used up in my undergrad. Another option was that I could have easily taken a line of credit with Scotiabank like my classmates and borrowed a bit from the bank. Finally, there was also the option of simply asking mom for money.

This was definitely the worst option to consider because she was already paying for my rent in Waterloo like she had been for all of undergrad. Owing mom more money was something I really didn’t want to do because I just felt guilty about the entire ordeal. Luckily, as it turns out, my money problems for Optometry School would disappear almost immediately as they appeared.