Learning From "The Legal Genealogist" and Update On My "Clock"

My mind is stuffed with ideas after a weekend of learning from the one and only, Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell. Her seminars were far better than I could have dreamed of and the turnout was a testament to Colorado Genealogical Society, their board, and their volunteers. It was seamless. 

Best of all, for me personally I learned so much, yet I also learned that I know so much, all thanks to Judy Russell’s seminars. You see, I’m still “on the clock” and I am entering those days of wondering if I can pull it all off. To wit, I have put “senioritis” into a whole knew dimension. I am just over halfway to my deadline and I know it. Technically, I could pull the whole portfolio together in a week or two at this point, even factoring in that I would lose something and have to stop and look and then find out that the cat was sitting on it the whole time (along with my phone - her favorite). I can do it, have done it, but keep going on, adding and subtracting and throwing this or that over for some thing better, shinier. Watching television for example, for me, has gone by the wayside. That is to say that I mean the kind that you actually sit down and just...watch. For me, what little “watching” I do is done surrounding by books and notes and electronic gadgetry and a minimum of three websites and six documents open on my computer at all times and they are in use through it all. 

That’s the life - or my life - of being on the clock, but it is a magnificent one. Why? What makes it so magnificent?  While working on my portfolio for certification by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG), I have been attending institutes, seminars, tuning in to webinars, devouring journals, and even searching for and buying back issues of them, for particularly useful articles. I have put together a library of reference books that fills shelves and have been reading a stack of heavy, thick books that have to remain at home when I go to seminars, because if I put them in my suitcase, I’d need a second suitcase, and even then they would both still be overweight. If you haven’t figured it out, I have been on the road quite a bit and will be for the rest of the year.

Granted, my education is self-imposed to a certain extent and while the BCG does not mandate such a schedule per se, they encourage continuing education (seminars and institutes) and keeping up via books, journals, videos, online education, and webinars. I am just taking it to the over-achievers’ level of “I need to be absolutely, 100% sure that I am as good as I am supposed to be.” I got lucky last weekend, because the education came to me, here in Denver and it was one of the best seminars I have ever attended.

So thank you, Judy Russell, for helping to make me feel a little bit better about my skills and for teaching me so much more about the things that I needed to learn, or at least those that needed clarification. Please come back and see us in Denver again because I know I’ll need a tune-up and there are many others here who missed your seminar and who really would like to hear you speak. Until then, safe travels.