I took the day off from work on Friday, and have been busy catching up since coming back to work on Monday, so I've been a bit slow in writing.
I found out on Thursday of last week that a program I had submitted to one of the major national Student Affairs conferences, had been accepted. This is cool news, especially since I didn't spend more than 20 minutes writing the proposal. I had reflected on the idea for long enough that I didn't really need to take a lot of time in writing it.
There are two major organizations in Student Affairs, NASPA and ACPA. I submitted the same proposal to both organizations for their national conferences. I would like for the proposal to get accepted to ACPA, because I'd rather go to their conference this year than NASPA. But, if not, I'm more than happy to attend NASPA and do the program there. I doubt if my employer would pay for me to go to both conferences.
Does anyone out there do genealogy/family tree research as a hobby? If not, I recommend it. It's like a drug addiction, but in a good, productive way. Before I started this, back in December of 2001, the furthest back I knew was one branch of my family to my Great-great-great grandfather. Now, through the work I've done, I've pushed all branches of my family back to at least the great-great grandparents, and the farthest back I've gone is 7 generations! It's great fun, and it has helped give me a perspective on a sense of place and time. Not that I didn't have this before, but now, I feel like I know more about where I'm from.
Granted, all I know about a lot of these ancestors are their names, vital dates, and perhaps their job, but it's a start. I have two G3-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War (from NJ). The earliest ancestors in the US came over around 1850. I've pushed back my Scottish ancestors, for one branch, into the late 1700's. Very cool stuff...
I've also been able to make some connections with siblings or cousins of my grandparents, who I never really knew before. That's really rewarding, in it's own way.
Okay, I have to go back to work. I'm typing this on a really slow Mac laptop, because my ICrap is waiting to be converted to a Dell...
Cheers!
It sounds like too much work! Having to send away for records, and all.
Re:Genealogy
zorknapp on 2002-11-14T21:05:21
In some ways, it is like work, but I view it more as a hobby, or even being like a detective. There are times that you have to piece together different pieces of evidence, or see what's "most likely" to be true.For instance, my great grandmother, according to everything I know about her, was born in 1886 in New York City. However, when I requested her birth record, the city said it wasn't in that year. I thought this odd, since I *knew* from talking to my grandmother, that her mother (my great-grandmother) had requested her birth certificate from the city at some point in the past, and had actually received it.
Then, I re-examined some old census records, and in 1900, my great-grandmother is listed as having the birth year of *1885!* I hadn't noticed this before, because it was a write-over of 1886, and the handwriting was messy.
I've since re-requested the record of her birth from NYC, for 1885. I'll be interested to find if she was actually born in that year, because if she was, her parents were married in August of 1885, and she was born in November. If it was November of 1885, then her parents were actually having sex before marriage.
Heaven forbid!
;) So, while someone may read this, and say, "Who cares about stories of people born over 100 years ago, even if they are relatives," I get great satisfaction from trying to piece these stories together...
Cheers!
