Most of the student reviews I post are full of great progress and amazing improvements and glorious glory all around.

Rainbows and unicorns.

In the interest of being fair and truthful about the whole picture though, I want to show you the other types of feedback as well.  The scenarios when things don’t go as planned, or I altogether fail to deliver amazing results.  Just because you sign up with me doesn’t automatically guarantee success.  Let’s look at Peter Z’s post in the forum, where things have actually gotten worse rather than better:

(seeming lack of) progress report

On day 29 of program –
My centimeter averages for the last week are at right:23.6, left: 21
My Snellen averages for the last week are right: 20/30, left: 20/40, both: 20/40
My close-up differential distance, with which I originally had blur at 68-70 cm, is now blurring at 60 cm. (My close up differential I had made from an eye exam and it does have astigmatism correction in it. It is: R: -3 -1.75 x 18, l: -3.75 -1.5 x 148.

I’ve been averaging about 2 hours of closeup each day, about half is on-screen work, and the other half reading.
I’m still taking breaks every 20 – 25 minutes.
I get outside a lot.
My nutrition is quite good
I don’t have trouble with active focus – I’ve been doing that on my own for many years (although I didn’t know what it was called or why it was a good thing, just that it seemed right to do).
I still do tend to read by taking my glasses off entirely (habit), which I’ve been doing for many years – but I’ve been trying to remember to do my close-up reading with glasses on. Is there an overwhelming reason to do so, or since my brain is used to the shifting is there not much reason to do that?

So – my centimeter averages are worse now than they were the week before I started the program for real (was R:23.6, L: 21.8). My Snellen averages are worse now than when I started (was R: 20/20, L: 20/30, Both: 20/20 with a little fuzz).
I can deal with moving closer to the screen to accommodate blur at 60 cm, but ergonomically I don’t like to be so close.

Any thoughts?
I’ll keep at it, but I was clearly hoping for better results.

Look at that.  Peter is actually seeing worse (per centimeter) since he started following my advice.

While fortunately these situations are few and far between, they do cause me anxiety.  Of course Peter could just ask for a refund and chalk it up to a failed experiment.  I don’t want any of my students to have anything less than a great experience, though.  So if not throwing in the towel, what’s going less than right here, with Peter Z?  I have some suspicions.  If you read his account closely, you might be able to find a possible source for the issue.  Can you spot it?

I can’t tell you the outcome of this story, yet.  Peter’s thread in the forum is still quite new, I’ve been adding some troubleshooting ideas there.  We’ll have to wait and see how this goes.  Stay tuned for updates …

Only-somewhat-cheers,

-Jake

Off-topic Sunday Note:

Do Western hospital hard sell you on c-section procedures?  I’m somewhat shocked how strongly doctors in the high end hospitals in Bangkok are pushing for c-sections.  We had visited a few hospitals, and it’s been less than encouraging.  They start with a soft sell, saying how c-section much more convenient and easy and painless.  And then once you say no thanks, they really start pushing for it.  A friend told me that they had gone for the “natural” package (no c-section) and right before delivery the doctor came back and again really went for the hard sale on surgery (double the fee, but no pressing health reasons stated to do it – friend really had to push back, ultimately went with natural birth and all was well).

We actually ended up choosing a government hospital where the attitudes were way, way more laid back and patient friendly.  Let’s see how that turns out!