Graduates Minyao Chen, Yani Ho (pictured) and Rishi Khattar organised a night to remember for everyone

Graduates from the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Auckland ended 2021 on a high with an extravagant graduation dinner. Despite Covid restrictions forcing the cancellation of the annual Eyeball and the postponement of the graduation ceremony to May 2022, I’m happy to say we delivered a successful celebratory end-of-year event for the graduates, supervisors, lecturers and industry sponsors.

The BOptom graduating class of 2021 with some of their lecturers

It’s been an incredible few years of learning, creating memories and making lasting friendships and this event allowed us to reunite with our peers over dinner, drinks, dancing and music. It was an excellent opportunity for all of us to get together before everyone enters the workforce.

(Back) Yuvraj Pahuja, Luke Oliver, Max Wang, Greg Park, Jaewon Choi and (front) Devyani Soma, Wen Wen Huang and Rishi Khattar

A special thanks to our diamond sponsors: Re:Vision, the New Zealand Optometry Student Society (NZOSS) and the Faculty of Medical and Health Science; our gold sponsor, Specsavers; and our bronze sponsors, New Zealand Association of Optometrists, and Eye Institute, for their support. Without their generous contributions, this event would not have been possible.

Rishi Khattar is the immediate past president of NZOSS