Procrastination is my specialty. For example, instead of reading papers right now and thinking about what I want to discuss with my advisor Sunday afternoon (yes, I am having a meeting with my advisor on Sunday), I am writing a blog entry. Why? Because it seemed much more appealing than reading papers.
Another example of my procrastination that is actually a really big pain right now (and which prompted me to write about): going to see the eye doctor.
About a year ago, I made an appointment with an eye doctor at MIT Medical for a routine yearly eye exam. However, somehow, not only did I not get a routine eye exam when I showed up for my appointment, I got talked into four follow-up sessions to get better-fitting contact lenses and was shoo-ed out of the office in under 30 minutes. When I left my original appointment, I asked the doc, “so, what about my eye exam?” His response was, “oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll get to it.”
Well, after two of the four follow-up sessions, I hated my eye doc so much that I vowed never to go back to see him again. So basically, in the ened, I used up the one yearly eye exam I am alotted by my insurance AND paid for four extra contact-lens fitting sessions (of which I only went to two), AND got nothing out of any of that, not even my originally scheduled annual eye exam where the doc flips through all those silly little discs of transparent plastic asking “Which one is clearer? Lens #458 or lens #459?”
Because of that, I never got a prescription written out for me for last year, which meant that I couldn’t buy new contacts unless I get another routine eye exam where the doctor actually does his job. Luckily for me though, my dad had bought me a whole bunch of boxes of contacts last summer. But what seemed like ample supply steadily diminished over the past year, and my last pair of contact lenses started deteriorating and irritating my eyes toward the end of last week, forcing me to throw them out.
I had, of course, realized that my contacts would run out at some point. On multiple occasions, I would think to myself “I should go and just pay out-of-pocket for another eye exam so I can get a prescription and make sure I can buy more contacts.”
This, however, I never did because I am an expert at procrastinating.
So as a result, I have had to wear my glasses for the past week or so, and I haven’t worn glasses since freshmen year of high school. The change in perspective from having corrective lenses right on my cornea to having corrective lenses AN INCH in front of my cornea is giving me a headache, literally. I feel like I am seeing cross-eyed all the time.
Not being able to procrastinate any longer, I made an appointment with an eye doc, a DIFFERENT one this time. Luckily, I don’t have to wait too long; the appointment is for next Tuesday morning. The first thing I’m going to do when I step out of that office with that piece of magical prescription paper is to buy me a box of contacts.