Optometry school students are not known for their acting chops, or singing ability, or dancing dexterity.
This is not a bad thing. It’s just an is thing, much like most chefs aren’t known for farming, and most rocket scientists aren’t known for painting. (Well … we assume.)
However, this doesn’t mean the next generation of optometry professionals can’t bring it when called upon.
The students at Northeastern State University Oklahoma College of Optometry proved that in spades with their parody video of the Vanilla Ice hip hop classic “Ice Ice Baby.” The reenvisioned version is appropriately titled “Eyes Eyes Baby” and features all-new eyecare-related lyrics. Their artistry was unveiled last month in Chicago at the American Optometric Student Association Optometry Student Bowl.
And much to the students’ surprise, Vanilla Ice himself made a cameo appearance in the video.
NSUOCO students Nathan Kuykendall, Jenna Dougherty and Tiffanie Nguyen spoke about the experience with the hometown Tahlequah Daily Press.
“We went crazy when we got to Chicago and saw the video for the first time at Student Bowl,” Dougherty said. “We had no idea they got Vanilla Ice to be in the video. It really was an unforgettable experience.”
Optometry schools from across the country gather each year to participate in the Student Bowl, which is part of the annual industry conference Optometry’s Meeting. Student representatives from each school compete for prizes and bragging rights by answering optometry-related questions.
There’s also a side competition at stake: the Spirit Award. Northeastern State took home the award from last year’s event in Denver. A press release at the time commended NSUOCO students “for their creative support of every contestant.”
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Kuykendall explained the significance of the award in the Daily Press article.
“The prize for winning this award is having the opportunity to film a hype video for the upcoming annual competition,” Kuykendall said. “(In Denver), our optometry school not only had the largest number of students in attendance, but also brought the most energy. This is substantial, considering our optometry school is the smallest in the country.”
Student Bowl sponsor EssilorLuxottica in May sent a video production crew to Tahlequah, OK, for a full day of filming.
“The whole day of filming was exhausting,” noted Nguyen in the Daily Press article. “We are optometry students. We don’t normally get to showcase our singing, dancing, or acting skills. So it was fun to see all my classmates in a different setting where they got to show off their talents.”
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Kuykendall and Nguyen authored the rewritten lyrics. There were catchy lines throughout the parody, beginning with the opening salvo: “All right stop, look at these lines and listen. We are here to fix your vision.”
Then there’s this bit of fun wordplay a couple of lines later: “To the extreme, I refract like a vandal. Say one or two and we’ll get a good handle.”
Delightful stuff.
The students all expressed how much fun it was to create and produce the video. The capper at the end was just “ice”ing on the cake.
“When the video started playing, all of our jaws dropped, eyes went wide, and we shook our pom poms so hard because we saw Vanilla Ice up on that screen in our hype video,” Nguyen recalled. “Hearing him shout out NSUOCO was the coolest thing!”
Doctors of the eyes, eyes, baby, indeed.