Take a moment to reflect on the accomplishments you plan to achieve as a Doctor of Optometry. Maybe your hopes and dreams mirror those of a family member who is a Doctor of Optometry or maybe they are the result of a relationship you have with a mentor who is in the optometric field. Possibly your goals are simply ones that you have imagined yourself. Now envision that upon graduation, you are not allowed to prescribe the drugs you used to treat patients in your clinical rotations, or that your ability to perform exceptional refractions is undermined due to the popularity of a phone app. How do you give the best health and eye care to your patients? Often our ability to see the past as well as the future is blurred. It seems unfathomable to imagine the profession of Optometry 50 years ago and even harder to envision what it might become. The great strides made in the field of optometry are, in part, thanks to the American Optometric Association (AOA), which has fought for, and continues to fight for optometrists’ rights to provide the highest standard of care for our patients as well as ASCO, which is committed to achieving excellence in optometric education and to helping its member schools, including my own, prepare well-qualified graduates for entrance into the field.