As a child, I always wanted to help people. I didn’t necessarily know how I wanted to do that, but I knew it in my core. When I was a younger adult, I thought that meant working with kids in the mental health field. But after several years in varying roles, I knew that wasn’t it. Then I became a mother of two amazing children and my desire to help others got swallowed up by being a full-time stay-at-home mom. And while that stayed my focus for many years, parenting and homeschooling through a move to a new state followed by a pandemic, I always knew my time would come. At one point during my journey as a parent, I needed a job to help support my family as my husband went back to school. The universe spoke and led me to work in a brand-new optometric practice. While my main focus was working in reception, in private practice, everyone wears multiple hats. I quickly discovered that working with patients in the optical was my favorite hat to wear. I loved helping people see better, picking out frames that helped them feel comfortable and confident in their sight. I also enjoyed the act of dispensing new glasses to patients, seeing them love their new glasses and how it helped them see themselves and the world around them more clearly. But so much of what has shaped my desire to set foot in this profession is my family’s stories of needing vision assistance as well as my own experience with opticians. My mom told me a story about how she knew she needed glasses. It was Christmas time in the late 1950s and the mall near her house would be decorated with huge wreaths. She loved to look at them, but it wasn’t until she tried on a friend’s glasses that she even realized those wreaths were decorated with red ornaments. And while my own experience was far less dramatic, with my siblings noticing I was squinting to look at things, it was no less important. I often think about other kids in the same position, needing glasses and not even realizing it. Or even adults wearing the same prescription year after year despite newer advances in technology. It is my plan as a student to bring knowledge and passion to my practice. I want to advance my knowledge of new technologies in lenses, whether it be in thin lenses, newer progressive lenses, or in myopia management. I want to continue to learn and grow in this profession, even past my schooling. I also understand that being an optician doesn’t end in the dispensary. I plan to be an active participant in my state association, beginning with being the student representative. I want to grow our state association into a group of active participants who are as eager to learn as I am. I recently had the opportunity to attend the OAA Leadership Conference. I learned so much about what it takes to be an active optician. But what I learned most of all is that I am in the right place and I have found my people. I still feel the calling to help people, to share with them the passion that I feel about opticianry. I plan to help others see their world as clearly as I feel the rightness of the opticianry profession is for me.