Connecting the Dots: A Certified Optician's Journey Across Nearly Five Decades

How does one choose a career path at 18? This career chose me, as I followed my father, who was an optician for 76 years until he was 93. He did not want this for me. I had to convince him. When I finally did, he left me with three things. One, "I will help you get your first job, and that one only." Two, "You will go to school and get certified." Three, "Do not embarrass me." I thought that was doable. I have been ABO certified in a non-licensed state since 1983. That certification is the foundation everything else in this story is built on. 

By the time my friends were graduating high school, I had already been a certified optician for five years. I realized that if I was going to stay in this industry long term, I needed a plan. Before I share it, here is something I do not want you to forget. 

We are all trailblazers, whether we realize it or not. You have already left a trail of career DOTS. Connect them, and you will see your future possibilities, or at least change how you view your eye care career. 

One day I sat down and drew eight DOTS on a piece of paper. Each DOT represented five years. I knew I did not have complete control, but I also knew that without some kind of plan, I would end up drifting. I filled in those DOTS with notes, aspirations, people, and companies. Nothing was guaranteed, yet without a plan I would not achieve. I have lost and found that piece of paper more than once, and right now it is lost again, and this time I am okay with that. I do not need it anymore. My last DOT is exactly where I envisioned and planned. One of my favorite quotes came years later: "You can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward." That was Steve Jobs. Little did he know, he stole my idea of a career path. 

I tried to leave the profession once, but as I tell people, this is a boomerang industry. You always come back to a great industry, and you always make a difference. I have chosen this profession over and over again for nearly five decades now. Looking back, I see all the people, positions, and influences that shaped my career. So many facets, ideas, and changes, but one thing always remained: why I became an optician, and why I stayed educated and certified, came down to one reason. The patient, the client, the person at the end of whatever my role was. The person who would see better, experience life differently, and live more enjoyably because of it. 

Becoming a Certified Optician 

I sat for my certification at 18 years old. That was the foundation everything else attached to. We have to educate people, not just outside our field, but inside it too. Being an optician should be a deliberate choice, built on real competencies and certification or licensure in every state. Nobody drifts into certification. You choose it, you study for it, and you carry it with you for the rest of your career. 

Certification comes through the ABO, and licensure requirements vary enormously by state – more than most people realize. As I write this, according to ABO/NCLE, Minnesota, which remains a non-certified, non-licensed state, has 663 certified opticians and 169 certified contact lens technicians. Certification establishes that you know the fundamentals: optics, lens materials, frame fitting, dispensing accuracy. That baseline matters enormously, especially in a field where a poorly fit pair of glasses can cause headaches, eye strain, or a fall risk in an older patient. But certification was never meant to be the finished structure. It was always meant to be the floor I keep building on. 

I still feel the weight of that choice every time I introduce myself to a client. I greet every person the same way. Welcome them, ask their name, ask how I can help. Then I say, "My name is Karen and I am a Certified Optician, trained to help you with all your eyewear needs and explore the options you do not even know you want. We are a vital part of your health care, and I am very happy you chose us." People are stunned, not occasionally, regularly. I am not "just" an optician, and neither is anyone else in this field who has put in the work and continues to strive to progress. That was an important DOT in my path. 

The Road of Staying Certified 

Becoming an optician was the easy part. Staying educated and connecting those DOTS in the industry was fun, though not always easy. It was hundreds of smaller choices stretched across decades: continuing education, teaching classes, sitting on association boards, managing optical practices, consulting, asking for positions without knowing if I could actually do the job. Every one of those was a choice to keep working through a different facet of this industry rather than settling into a single lane. 

I have mentored hundreds of people, and I always tell them the same thing: "If you get bored, that is your own fault. Open your eyes, look around a different corner, and look at the future. You will find your next DOT." 

About six months ago, that same instinct pulled me back to the dispensing floor, part time, at the boutique optical where my father retired from for the third time. Nothing about that decision was necessary. I chose it because the best way to keep growing is to keep choosing new facets of this industry, even ones you have already lived through once. 

A lot has changed since I dispensed full time, and continuing to learn is not busywork, it is how you stay relevant. I dispense part time in a high end boutique that carries an expansive, curated selection of frames we are known for. We do not take insurance for eyewear, and between those two facts, every client is specifically choosing us. That may be what draws them in, but the fact that all our opticians are ABO certified is part of who we are, and our clients understand the role we play in their overall health care. That distinction is part of what shaped the introduction I share with every client. 

One pair is not enough, for anyone, ever. "The First Pair Is Already Sold" is a course I wrote years ago and still teach today. The foundation is simple: if someone comes to see you, they have already decided to buy one pair, so stop thinking about that one. It is the additional pairs that truly enhance their lives. I have a deep knowledge and level of technical competency that no one can take from me. My superpower is connection and commitment to the best outcome, every time. 

None of that would work without staying current. Augmented reality to present the best options and AI based measuring for every frame purchased are game changers for how a patient perceives what you offer. Patients are educated now, and you had better be ready in a way you have never been before. Every day, your inbox, trade journals, and social media bring technology you cannot afford to ignore. Patients will not wait for you to catch up. Someone else already has, and you may never get the chance, because they are already in someone else's office.

You Must Advocate for Yourself to Advocate for Others 

You have heard this in health care, right? As opticians, we are one of the largest parts of the solution. We have to use our knowledge and our voice, and we cannot be afraid of failing to advocate for opticianry. 

I am standing on the final DOT of my plan now, what I call rewiring, not retiring, and I never would have guessed I would end up here. Like so many of the years between the DOTS, I did not see it coming, but I knew that if I stayed prepared and ready, what was meant to be would be. I will never stop fighting for, advocating for, and doing what I can to unite our profession for a brighter, richer future, not just for you, but for those who come after us, and especially for the people we serve. 

Just when I thought I was close to being done, the most important work of all found me, through a deeply personal journey with my late father: a traumatic brain injury, dementia symptoms, and the enormous gaps in elder vision care within our own industry. I am stepping into a space few have, though I doubt that will stay true for long. Cognitive change and vision go hand in hand in how we live later in life. This is not a choice, it is a mission. 

While I remain in vision care, my focus has narrowed and sharpened. I have stepped into another health space where no one knows me, where many came before me with far more knowledge, and I am completely at peace with that. Vision changes are often mistaken for cognitive decline, and cognitive decline is routinely mistaken for vision loss. Families and caregivers rarely have anyone walking them through the difference, and eye care professionals rarely have the training to bridge that gap. That is the work I built Eyes on Dementia around, rooted in the decades my late father spent as an optician before me. It is where certification, continuing education, and career advancement stop being separate dots and become one connected line. The same instinct that taught me to slow down for a client picking out frames tells me to slow down for a family trying to understand how deeply cognition and vision are intertwined. 

Challenge: Connect the DOTS You Have Made

Nearly five decades in, I can look back and see that none of it was accidental. Certification led to confidence on the floor. Confidence led to teaching, board work, and a business of my own. All of it eventually led me back to a dispensing table, and forward into elder vision care and dementia work I never could have predicted at 18. Every DOT connects because I kept choosing to place the next one. 

That is the real invitation here. Get certified, and treat licensure as the start of the story rather than a box to check. Keep learning long after the certificate is framed on your wall. Say what you do out loud, with pride, the way I say it to every client who walks through our door. Reach for the next facet of this industry even when the current one is comfortable. This career will keep expanding for exactly as long as you keep choosing to expand it, one DOT at a time.

Written by Karen Michaelson