NSUCO - The Visionary Fall 2017

8 • NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Externship in China Helps New Graduate Expand Global Experiences BY ARNIE ROSENBERG How is an optometry clinic like Black Friday? If it’s Tianjin Medical University Eye Hospital in Tianjin, China, you have hundreds of people waiting for the doors to open, long lines, and a staff moving people through as quickly as it can. Just ask Julie Schaefer, O.D., who graduated from NSUCO in May. She lived it nearly every day during her six-month externship in Tianjin. And, the comparison to America’s notorious after- Thanksgiving day of shopping isn’t even her own analogy. It came from one of the Chinese optome- trists in the massive clinic where she worked. “That’s our hospital every day,” the doctor told Schaefer. She quickly found out just how right he was. “Black Friday actually is an accurate reference,” Schaefer said. “It’s really crowded, and there are huge lines as soon as you come in. But they’re very good at handling all of the patients. They’re very efficient.” They need every bit of that efficiency, Schaefer discovered. Patients actually line up in the exam room, which is “something unheard of in America,” said Schaefer, who hails from Weston, Florida, and is a summa cum laude graduate of Florida State University (FSU). “They stand in the exam room, waiting for their turn in the chair. It’s amazing the way the doctors multitask and are able to keep everything straight in their heads.” While working and studying in China could present its own challenges, living in such a foreign setting wasn’t at all intimidating, especially for someone who had become an accomplished world traveler in the past few years. The wanderlust hit Schaefer when she graduated from FSU in 2013. After a 28-day whirlwind trip with her brother through Europe—seeing Paris, London, Munich, Barcelona, and Amsterdam— she was hooked. The next summer, she was back in Europe with her best friend. Next came backpack- ing through Japan and Korea, and then another backpacking trip through Bosnia and Serbia. During her third year at NSU, as she skimmed through the list of available externship sites, she first focused on an opportunity in Alaska, but quickly seized on Tianjin. That was a whirlwind as well. With studying for the national board exam in March and then finals in April, she barely had time to learn a few phrases in Mandarin before hopping on the plane. Still, even the language barrier wasn’t insurmount- able for this adventurous extern. She was paired with a Chinese optometry student who helped her with Chinese and soon became her best friend. None of that was surprising for NSUCO professor Bin Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., FAAO. Schaefer, he said, was the perfect candidate for the Tianjin extern- ship. The clinical rotation in China was established more than 15 years ago. Zhang helped extend it from the initial three months to six months so Schaefer could pack more travel across China around her clinical experience. “Julie is quite an outgoing girl, so I knew she would fit quite well,” said Zhang, who taught Schaefer during her first three years at NSU. “She is willing to try different things to meet and embrace the new culture. I really never worried about whether she would fit in.”