The Gomal University Confession Home F.b

[Arabella Kochanski]

DrTimothy Root is a practicing ophthalmologist and cataract surgeon in Daytona Beach, Florida. He began cartooning while an undergraduate at Yale University, and continued his medical illustration while earning his medical degree at Columbia University.

Ocular basics are usually learned the hard way. Students bumble through the eye clinic for months as they learn through trial and error. A difficult time, indeed, especially with those senior doctors harassing you.

I still occasionally come across students who are born complexity-loving academics. These students would rather dive right into the encyclopedic fountain of knowledge and consume traditional textbooks as fast as possible.

Yale was an interesting experience for a kid like me. Many of my fellow students came from prep schools and the sheer amount of talent was incredible. Half of my roommates were valedictorians, and several of my classmates were Olympic athletes. I on the other hand, liked to doodle cartoons and not talk to girls.

Most of the rich* kids came from money and seemed to gravitate toward finance or creative endeavors. They became entrepreneurs, investment bankers, and real estate tycoons. They probably rule the world right now.

I ended up at Columbia University in New York City.

Medical school was pretty awful for me. For one thing, I really was poor at this point. I was out of cash, living week to week off credit cards, sharing a subsidized apartment with two girls (who i was afraid to talk to).

Teaching hospitals tend to be in the worst part of towns, and I lived in a ghetto. Dog poop on every sidewalk and trash in every gutter. I was nervous to leave my apartment after dark and I fell asleep every night to the sound of car alarms.

I began drawing cartoons and submitting them to local trade magazines. A large number of trade journals are based out of New York City, and many of them will publish cartoons their readership might enjoy. The bigger ones, such as The New Yorker, are extremely competitive. The smaller journals are much easier to break into.

I had some experience with cartoons, having drawn a short series for my college newspaper, so I began to make submissions. In short order, I made a sale! How exciting! An outlet for my creativity that made money and got me a publication!

However, websites were being born, MySpace was cool, and the dot-com bubble was in full swing! I learned basic HTML and started my first website, selling glow-in-the-dark paint that my brother mixed in his garage. I saved money and bought a couple of domain names.

Despite my limited capital, I built a website for our glowing paint business and it took off. We made a handsome profit every month. I was in charge of the website and collecting sales and my brother would ship out the paint from his local post office every weekend.

Then we started getting orders from overseas. We had to learn shipping and tax laws for mailing flammable paint across borders. There was the corporate structure, documentation, and tax forms to figure out as well.

As a medical student, I had neither the time nor resources to fully capitalize on the internet. Still, I found it fascinating as a publishing medium for books and video. My brief foray into cartoon publication taught me that traditional media (print magazines, journals, etc.) was a hard road to success. Traditional publications employ editors that act as gatekeepers.

The PowerPoint course bombed (too much competition) but the video editing series sold quite well. Enough to bolster my monthly finances and give me some breathing room to study. The course continued to generate passive income for another eight years, even after I moved on to better things.

Maybe there was a way to combine my burgeoning web/multimedia interests (low barrier to entry) with my medical studies (high barrier of entry). How many doctors could there be who knew how to illustrate, make websites, and edit videos?

I was the first medical student to take an informatics rotation, so I tried to make the most of it. I took online crash courses and taught myself Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, and Adobe Illustrator. I improved my HTML skills and learned to edit video using professional software. I worked on my drawing and painting technique.

I ended up at an ophthalmology program at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. I spent four years in that town and loved it all. Good things happened (I fell in love for the first time), bad things happened (my heart was crushed for the first time), but mostly I grew up and became an eye doctor.

I had a lot of hiccups learning ophthalmology. It took me some time to get into the groove. I will always be thankful for the preceptors who took me under their wing and gave me a chance to prove myself.

Looking back, I realize that this was one of the happiest times of my life. Residency is a lot better than medical school. You work harder, but at least you have a defined job and expectations. Your performance is no longer determined by your ability to feign interest.

Private practice has given me the opportunity to pursue a ton of fun projects, and my creative hunger has been thoroughly sated. Thanks to the internet, I can leverage my efforts and educate as many students as I want! I have no editors or academic affiliations to worry about, which gives me a great amount of freedom in how I teach.

Dear Tim ,

i like to congratulate you for this nice work.

iam pediatric ophthalmology fellow and i watch all your clips , its very nice and very helpful. and i enjoy watching all of them

my best wishes for you were you go

regards

Fahad alwadani ,MD

I had an Inferior Turbinate Reduction procedure done on me about 15 days ago. During the days immediately following it, I was frequently getting puffs of air coming from the punctum area of my right eye when I blew my nose. I was very worried that the Dr. had punctured something, and I was in serious trouble.

Great job Tim. I will be recommending your site to all my students. Billing and coding personnel need to learn the clinical side as well and your information is short, concise and to the point. A great introduction to the topic.

I am a student optometry from Holland and I bumped on your site by google. You did great work with this website its a great and easy to follow, i would say go on with your work and i am sure that i will use your website a lot for easy refreshment.

dear tim

thanks a lot you did a great job i would like to congratulat you for this job i am an ophtalmic nurse really you helped me a lot for more understanding and more information i need i wish this site will stay free thank you

tim your effoets are really admirable. i wanted to do these things with medicine.u made eye very easy and understandable i really apprecite ur endeavour. tim please tell me how to download these videos because i donot have internet access at my home please send me these videos to my email address drbil...@yahoo.com. with great regards Muhammad Bilal

Final year mbbs

Gomal Medical College

DIKHAN PAKISTAN.

Dr. Tim ,

Thank you so much for sharing your excellent work. As a certified ophthalmic technician with 15 years experience, I have found this site to be extraordinarily helpful when training new staff as well as supplementing my own continued education.

Just wanted to say a quick thanks for offering this free and informative website to all of us interested in ophthalmology. As a med student, visiting this site from time to time allows me to keep a general understanding of ophthalmology fresh in my mind, and your approach to explaining the material is one of a kind. I look forward to future works.

I cannot thank you enough!! As a medical student I am currently studying for finals. Your very visual methods and humour make learning about the eye (and particularly CN palsies) both understandable and interesting.

Dear Tim,

Thank you for your superb presentation which I found after undergoing eye surgery recently. I spent 40 years of my life in teaching and in developing instructional materials for college students, and therefor I am all the more impressed with your excellent work. Keep it up!

Dear Tim, this is indeed a great thing you did. Wish the other specialties would do the same. I love the way you present it that even non-doctors would be able to understand them. And the pictures and videos showing actual cases, very informative and really get to appreciate the field and the study. Congratulations on a job well done and indeed you have done good to A LOT of people both doctors and non-doctors. Thanks a whole lot and again, congratulations!!!!

Thank you so much for such concise and factual knowledge. Your explanations are simple and helpful to a beginner. I am

using your work as a training tool to suppliment my one-on-one training with new ophthalmic assistants in our office.

This is a terrific resource. I am a long-practicing pediatrician and have wished for exactly this kind of resource. It has been a very nice review for me, and is perfect as a teaching tool for a subset of parents who wish to learn more about various topics including this particularly difficult one. I know everyone out here shares my experience that you are a gifted teacher. Thank you for your selflessness in sharing this with the community.

I am a 4th year MBBS student from LUMHS Pakistan, i was looking for something which covers the basics of ophthalmology and your lectures and videos saved me, amazing work. Thank u so much for this site and i must appreciate all the hard work u put in it

God bless ?

hi dr tim, From Per, congratulations for this web site, it will be useful for our students and optometrist here. Ill share this page for them. I.ll be sure they like this.

Thank you for making teaching easier.

I am an Optometrist from Philippines. I will be taking a licensure exam with the Department of Health in Dubai to legally practice my profession there. As for now I am having self review and I am thankful to found your videos in youtube and went to your website to check other videos and lectures.

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