February 8th 

In January, the focus was sustainability when it came to eyes. In it, I described the material used to make prescription glasses and contact lenses. I recently experienced an incident where something happened with my contacts, and I got an infection, causing temporary blindness in both of my eyes. It was a scary experience that I would like to make a positive by incorporating into this month's SDA. My need to know: What would happen if my contacts went wrong? I want to propose it as a series of questions. For example, what would happen if my contacts fell out of my eye? What would happen if I slept with my contacts in? What would happen if I used a different solution? The point of the SDA would be to highlight dangers with contacts and show common misconceptions while doing this. I would aim to promote contacts for people scared of problems often associated with them that I recently found due to my incident. I looked up information to incorporate glasses but did not find as many issues. Instead of glasses, I want to ask what would happen if LASIK surgery went wrong since that is something I know a lot of people, including myself, are scared about as well. Since our eyes are such a sensitive organ, many people often fear anything that could hurt them since it isn't something you can generally "tough" out. You never know what is happening. When people lose vision, they panic. Sight is one of the senses we rely the most heavily on, so it is vital to recognize all the things that could go wrong, which I aim to do in this SDA when relating to contacts and LASIK since my focus is refractive errors. 

For this SDA, I am looking to take the informational path since there are so many topics I am looking to cover, and the question(s) are leaning towards educating the general public about concerns that I feel are not addressed enough or talked about. At least in my situation, I would hear all these rumors about contacts that no one would address. I also do not remember my doctors ever warning me about anything that could go wrong with contacts, so I think it is something that should be better put out there. Allowing for an argumentative piece would lead to an open-ended conversation where listeners can take either side, leading to more discomfort around the topic and general avoidance of contact lenses- an effect I do not want. Within the options we have, my two main SDA ideas are "The Ripple Effect" and "The Picture Book." The main reason is that the other two/three would be very hard to accomplish because I am out of the country for the last week of February unless I get them done before then. Also, "The Ripple Effect" would be perfect since an event recently did happen to me for me to "ripple" other questions off of. The effect was the ripple of questions I got because I have been thinking about contact lenses more and more after it happened. It will also affect how I take care of my contacts starting now. "The Picture Book" would also be a good idea for me as I could show my narrative and have the main character go into a spiral of questions and doubts about contacts while realizing at the end that it is a matter of how you take care. I am good at drawing, so it would be a purposeful way to use my skillsets. My only worries for "The Ripple Effect" would be deciding the form of my final product, as I want to create a narrative that flows into information. Although I know "The Picture Book" would allow for an easily-constructible narrative, since I have a clearer image of it in my brain, it would be challenging to draw all those pictures for it by myself while also writing the book. I am, however, excited about this SDA due to the very personal connection I plan on having with it. Although what happened to me is not good, I love that the timing lined up with the coming project.