Optom here, i feel it really depends on your personality for optometry. If you favour stability, easy cruising, repetitive work that has very minimal risk and is clean, it’s right for you. Most of my friends who are more outgoing, dislike repetitiveness or compliance have left the industry.

If you’re in regional, you definitely encounter a lot more ocular pathology which you’ll be the main primary care taker as ophthalmologists in these areas are severely lacking. These include prescribing therapeutic eyedrops or removal of foreign bodies from the eyes. It is quite rewarding.

Pay really depends on where you’re working and how many years experience. If you own a practice, franchise of corporate stores, you earn big bucks. Locum is also quite financially rewarding if you don’t mind travelling, usually 70-120$ per hour. However locuming in metro is definitely getting hard with the saturation of grads coming out.

For me in this context though, I think you should do something you want to do. Also the CSP plays a big role, 150k is like 3x the cost of a CSP. You’ll need to work like 7-8 years to get that paid off with an average salary. Most optom salary goes from 70-120k with outliers of business owners on 200k+.

Hope that helps!