DANIEL CASON
When Opelika native Daniel Cason ’16 began attending Auburn University, he already knew that he wanted to be an optometrist. The classes he took while studying at Auburn reaffirmed his choice.
“I think a lot of my classes in the biomedical sciences curriculum really reaffirmed for me that going into a health field was the right choice,” Cason said.
Cason attended Auburn University from 2012-2016 and earned a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Science from the College of Sciences and Mathematics (COSAM).
While at Auburn, Cason was a part of the Campus Kitchens Project organization, which allows students to donate uneaten food from dining venues on campus to food pantries to feed the food insecure in Lee County. He was also a COSAM Peer Advisor and student worker, which he said allowed him to see how hard advisors work for students and share his own advice with underclassmen.
“I think it’s important to find extracurricular activities that you really care about and impact not your resume, but who you are as a person,” Cason said.
Cason said he would encourage pre-medical students to join the pre-health student organization Alpha Epsilon Delta because it allowed him to hear from health professionals in different areas of the healthcare field.
Cason is now attending Optometry School at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). He is learning to help patients with refractive error, binocular vision problems, diseases of the eye, binocular vision problems, and more.
His advice for current COSAM students is to experience new things and not be afraid to reach out to people for help or advice, whether that be about classes at Auburn or career goals.
“There are a lot of people, including teachers, advisors and other students that want to help and make sure you achieve your goals,” Cason said. “It is also important to remember that life is more than just a GPA and a resume.”