Yeah, so about a month ago I was interning as an ophthalmic technician at a Dr.'s office here in town(Nashville) and really enjoying it. I talked to the office manager about getting a job there. They say to me, "David, what do you need?" I say "I need a full time job and $15 an hour"
"OK" was the answer, with a nod. My evaluation sheet came back to school with a big smiley "we'll hire him!" written on it. So after much phone tag and haranguing they say that they couldn't pay me what I was asking for...
I was a bit dissappointed, but not shattered, it was afterall, the first offer I made.
But they might be willing to pay me $9.50/hr for a 90 day trial period and then evaluate what I was worth to them.
$9.50 an hour - what an insult! 3 and a half years of college with a 3.899 GPA and an arsenal of skills can only get me $9.50 to make calculations that could leave a patient seeing or not after surgery!? $9.50 an hour to routinely touch the surface of patients eyes, culture samples from eyes, administer eye medications, write glasses and contact prescriptions?!
So I think I am dumping the field and going back to school. In the mean time I need a good job, and I can't find one. I know from the people I've talked to around town, I can't ever expect to make more than $30-35K a year with this. Thats a living, but its not a lifelong plan.

Here are my skills:

Class F license - for hire endorsement
Skilled as a computer technician
Soldering and component electronics repair
Optical Coherence Tomography
Heidelberg Retinal Topography
Fundus and Ophthalmic Photography
Auto-Refraction
Manual and auto-lensometry
A-scan Acoustic Biometry
Corneal Topography and Wave/Orb Scan
Humphrey Visual Field Testing
Refraction
Forklift operator
Extensive experience with children, senior citizens, and persons with special needs.
Pure tone Air/Bone Conduction Audiometry
Butterzone beatz
Photoshopping heads onto different bodies
Red Cross Basic Advanced First Aid Cert.
CPR cert.
Photography


All these are totally useless combined, apparently.
But I guess if you were in a plane crash I might be a good person to have along...
My life is so dissappointing. I swear I will stop doing this to myself...I try so hard.