Jessica G. is a member of VSP's Corporate Public Relations team.
I was seven. Holding the book inches from the end of my nose, I was reading the newest Encyclopedia Brown. My parents witnessed my peculiar reading posture, and took me to an optometrist, where we found it was time for vision correction. All through elementary school, I wore glasses (bad ones), and survived the kind of taunts you would expect: “four eyes,” “nerd,” “dork.”
Jessica G. in the 4th Grade.
Then I reached high school. As a textbook sullen teen, I decided that I was “soooo over” glasses and begged my parents for contact lenses. They weren’t sure I was ready to take the leap and wanted me to wait a couple more years before graduating to contacts. In a self-defeating act of defiance, I just stopped wearing my glasses. No glasses meant no blackboard in class, which meant that my attention span dropped as my grades followed suit. I began having headaches and eye strain from constantly squinting. But, hey, I thought I looked good.
So when a recently-released joint study by VSP and Prevent Blindness America showed that one in five teenagers have difficulty seeing in class, I believed it. Kids who can’t see what’s on the blackboard in class are at a serious disadvantage, and may be perceived to have learning disabilities or other behavioral problems, when it’s simply an issue of correcting their vision. These kids also often suffer from headaches and other symptoms of vision impairment. Read more »