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Optometry
Football season can be a challenge for Cheyenne Willard ‘27OD. Particularly when she has a big test coming up. Take, for example, one recent weekend. She had spent considerable time watching college football on Saturday and was preparing for a Sunday full of National Football League (NFL) action.
See, she’s in a fantasy NFL football league and wanted to keep an eye on the performances of her team’s players, which includes Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown.
But as a first-year student in the Doctor of Optometry program at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO) at Salus University, she needed to study for a big test.
“I did a little bit of time watching football and a little bit of time studying. I thought I’d just do it in the living room and do it all together, but that didn’t work out too well,” said Willard. “So then instead of watching, I had to sit in an office and hear the TV from the office. Of course, my phone just kept dinging with plays being made and I had to know what was happening.”
Everything turned out OK, though. She passed her test, won the week in her fantasy league, and learned a valuable lesson on how to prioritize her time.
Originally from Warner Robins, Georgia, (a state that’s a hotbed for college football), Willard graduated from Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia, in 2017 with a degree in forensic chemistry. She had planned to continue her education and become a Physician Assistant, but found herself working in an ophthalmology/optometry clinical facility instead, which she enjoyed so much it changed her career path to optometry.
Being from the South, Willard chose PCO/Salus to experience a different climate change and the early clinical exposure PCO/Salus is known for. “The biggest thing about being at Salus is that I don’t have any family here. But being able to find a family here has been huge,” said Willard, who was also part of the Summer Enrichment Program SEP). “I started finding them during SEP and orientation week, which continued in the first weeks of class. Now we’re a couple of months in and I feel like I’ve got a really good surrounding here.”
That family connection in Georgia also contributed to her love of sports. She played softball and volleyball as a teenager but was looking for a sport she could participate in that connected to her grandparents. So, at age 14, she took up golf.
“They would go out on the weekends with friends and I tagged along one weekend,” said Willard. “The concept of hitting a small ball with a thin stick and it going 200 yards down the fairway made no sense to me physically. So, I had to try it. And, when I was terrible at it, I had to keep trying it. And, when I’m still terrible at it, I still have to keep trying.”
But all that trying paid off. She was on the high school golf team for two years and then received a golf scholarship in which she participated all four years at Savannah State University.
To help Willard adjust to being away from home, her fiancé Daniel has joined her in the Northeast. They’ve been together for six years and have been engaged for only four months, but Willard has had their wedding date picked out for three years. It was chosen because of one of her favorite songs, “September” by the band Earth, Wind, and Fire.
“They refer to the 21st night of September and Sept. 21, 2024 is the only Saturday in the next several years that date lands on a Saturday,” she said. “So, I decided that was going to be our wedding day."
