I'm going to blame my lack of posting the last few days on all the running around I'm having to do to get ready for my move. The good news is it's slowly coming together: I think I actually have a plan for how, where, and (mostly) when I will be moving. Yay.
Yesterday I spent chasing after all sorts of doctors. My school requires that I submit records of all my immunizations. All I can say is that I'm glad my mom is one of the most organized people in the world because a lot of these immunizations took place when I was a baby and I doubt I had the wherewithall to ask the doctor for a copy of my shots so that I could store them in a safe place until someday nearly 29 years later when I was going to need them again. I'd like to think I was a fairly bright little child, but undoubtedly not THAT bright.
The immunization chart from my pediatrician took care of most of the requirements, but another doctor had just done my physical and I needed to get that form filled out as well. And ANOTHER doctor's office had done my last tetanus shot so I had to get in touch with them to find the record (which took several pieces of correspondance and a bunch of follow-up phone calls.) I've lived in relatively few places in the course of my life, but it seems that every doctor from every place I lived held some sort of important piece to my health documentation puzzle.
I don't think I'm the only one who, when at the doctor, is focused only on the issue at hand. The doctor applies treatment and then you go on your merry way. Who knew that you needed to immediately request documentation of what transpired just in case someday some school or institution required you to prove to them you are as healthy as you think you are? And then pity the disorganized person who brings home the paperwork and then files it in such a safe place that it is never seen again...
Of course, if I thought this exercise was annoying and tedious, I can't WAIT until I have to fill out the moral character application for admittance to the Bar. I took a look at it last night to see if I could get a jump on it. You have to account for all the time and every employer since you were 18. Assuming you can remember all of them, you can't just put down where it was that you worked. You have to remember your supervisors' names and then track them down and provide current contact information. (I realized there was no way to get a jump on this because I have no idea where they will all be in 3 years.)
Fortunately, as it turns out, I've always had packrat tendencies and I've saved a lot of stuff with the thought that it *might* turn out to be important. I just wish someone had told me that it was a *certainty* that these things would be important. I would have been more organized about holding on to all this official paperwork and it would have spared me the subsequent scrambling.
It's sort of like being a curator of your own life: imagine if you were someone famous like George Washington, someone that years later people would want to know everything about. Think about what sort of documents historians 200 years from now would like to see. Save them, because chances are they will come in handy sometime prior to your bicentennial celebration.