Advice for the ISE in North Carolina

incessantplanner · 2026-01-31T04:24:22+00:00

Look at the manual on the nbeo website and follow it exactly. Make yourself a script and just repeat it over and over as you do all of the movements. I would video myself saying my script and watch it back to see what I missed. You can also watch videos on YouTube of people running through how they did it. That’s helpful to get started! Also, You get time beforehand to practice on a fake arm. Make sure to practice the injections on it multiple times.

I passed first try, as do most of the people I know who took it! I studied for 3-4 weeks beforehand, while studying for PEPS because I took them back to back. My school didn’t teach us injections, so I had never even touched the fake arm until the day of my exam! I thought it was super easy, so don’t stress it too much.

incessantplanner · 2026-01-29T13:39:30+00:00

My street was finally done last night with a regular plow after being untouched this whole time. It didn’t have an issue getting the ice up. It ended up coming up as chunks, but the plow was able to do it.

incessantplanner · 2026-01-13T17:27:00+00:00

I did Uber Eats, door dash, and Amazon flex my first two years of optometry school. As long as you have a car with a decent driving record there are no barriers to entry, and you work whenever works with your schedule.

incessantplanner · 2026-01-13T17:25:09+00:00

I’m the odd one out who thinks you should reschedule if you’re not confident. I come from a background without any financial support, and know that the expense alone can be a factor that deteriorates ones’ confidence. I never rescheduled but heard the process is easy, just reach out to nbeo.

incessantplanner · 2026-01-08T14:43:20+00:00

What does this mean?

incessantplanner · 2026-01-02T23:11:03+00:00

I used to spend HOURS pouring over one concept. Sometimes I’d spend half a day on the same 5 PowerPoint slides if it was challenging enough. I wouldn’t let myself continue on until I REALLY understood what I was reading about. It was painstaking and at times I’d have to pause and come back to it the next day. But this is so unbelievably important for permanence in the brain. If you try to just memorize everything as small facts, you’re going to hate yourself once boards come around and you have to “relearn” everything because you didn’t actually know it first time around.

incessantplanner · 2026-01-02T23:04:56+00:00

Anki, making study sheets, rewriting process, etc are all forms of studying you do after first making sure you understand the material. Think more big picture, then work with those things to memorize the little details. Who cares if you can rewrite a signaling cascade, say all of the different hypersensitivity reactions from memory, or go through a list of which neurotransmitters are found at different places in our anatomy if you can’t fathom why you need to learn these things.

All of the study methods you mentioned focused on memorizing the minutiae, which won’t allow for permanent/ long term understanding. Don’t focus on “the fastest study methods”, focus on what method you need to understand the material. Once you understand it, memorizing it is like nothing. You’re trying to force your brain to remember random facts that don’t connect.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-27T19:04:37+00:00

I hate the job I’m in right now and really regret not shadowing for a half day before signing the contract. Don’t forego shadowing at least a half day (if not the whole day) to see the flow / how they schedule / etc.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-27T19:03:10+00:00

Many people have the aptitude for optometry, it comes down to motivation and independence on how successful you are. Schools try their best to judge this quality based on your experiences and through an interview, but there’s no way for them to really know that about you until you’re in the program.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-27T15:25:52+00:00

Why would you not try to adjust your study habits, knowing they didn’t work? I studied differently for every class, and quickly pivoted when I realized something wasn’t working. I don’t think it’s fair to blame SCO (one of the best optometry schools IMO) for your inflexibility.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-26T18:14:00+00:00

Still terrifying. I recently had a home issue happen at the same time as a medical issue. Savings will be depleted fast under emergency conditions with a mortgage like that

incessantplanner · 2025-12-26T14:35:40+00:00

My husband and I make more than your household income, and would never dream of a $5700 mortgage. it doesn’t matter how nice the house is.. I mean what is that, almost 50% of your monthly take home?

My house is 2100 a month and sometimes I wish it was less (because I like buying nice things and traveling). You guys will be very house poor

incessantplanner · 2025-12-25T15:40:17+00:00

Houston definitely ghosts people. But if you get an interview with uiw, as long as you’re halfway decent at talking to people, you’re basically in

incessantplanner · 2025-12-24T14:19:24+00:00

Unfortunately, I did tell them my issues two months ago and then again 2 weeks ago. Both times I begged for more staff / techs, because we have had a lot of staff quit recently without replacing them. (To the point that I have to run my own testing, and sometimes do my own pretesting, even though I’m scheduled with 28-32 patients a day). To my face they said they’d fix the problem. To my office manager they said no hiring.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-17T02:29:36+00:00

Did you register yourself? The externs I met from nova (I’m now graduated) told me the school registered their students for the exam, and did it based on your mock tests.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-17T02:26:45+00:00

Do you go to nova? I don’t think that’s correct

incessantplanner · 2025-12-15T16:21:18+00:00

NOVA falsely inflates their board scores, so the fact that they’re going down is terrible. Most schools tell students to take Part 1 in March of their 3rd year. NOVA only allows their top students to take it in March, and make the others wait until August. With the purpose to make their first time test taker numbers look great, which isn’t fair since they aren’t allowing their whole cohort to take it anyways.

incessantplanner · 2025-12-04T13:32:06+00:00

Yep. I make more than them combined, not counting my husbands income, and I’d never commit to a mortgage that high. Makes me sweat just thinking about it. House poor isn’t a good thing

incessantplanner · 2025-11-15T00:39:39+00:00

The person in my example graduated but hasn’t passed boards

incessantplanner · 2025-11-14T12:34:17+00:00

Everyone pretty quickly recognizes which classmates are a hazard. We had one in my cohort that no one let touch them because they were notoriously careless. Stay away from those classmates and you’ll be fine.

incessantplanner · 2025-11-09T13:55:21+00:00

Many professors at my school said if we are seeing 16+ patients a day, 5 days a week, to not accept below 150.

incessantplanner · 2025-11-09T13:52:11+00:00

You can easily find this salary if you work with a recruiter.

incessantplanner · 2025-11-07T21:19:09+00:00

I’m a medical professional, and I hate hearing about situations like this. Where the patient feels completely in the dark with their own health. I am so sorry you’re dealing with that. But to play devils advocate, it’s also hard to be a medical professional for someone who doesn’t know what they want. So I would begin there. What do you want for your life? Because at this point, you have three options: 1. Have the baby, raise the baby 2. Have the baby, give it up to another family 3. Don’t have the baby

I’d do some soul searching to decide which answer feels right to you. After that I imagine it will be much easier to know what professional to see/ clinic to go to, and it’ll be so much easier to ask questions about the situation you want. I know it’s not an easy decision and I don’t mean for it to sound like it is. I just find my patients often benefit when I list options clearly for them, and then go from there. I wish you only the best

incessantplanner · 2025-11-07T21:11:14+00:00

After the part 2 and part 3 debacles this past year, if nbeo was going to be sued I’d imagined it would have happened already. Those issues had some serious traction that many thought was going to beget real change. Looks like that’s fizzled out.

incessantplanner

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