A quick review on what has been previously covered in Planning the Mission. I wrote about my objectives and my planning. As I said at the end of part one, the most important thing required is planning to have a successful outcome.
Progress.
All my lists are now in Excel, sorted by date. Please note: AI is not perfect, each line/record needs to be checked again. Also, watch for missed records. Where this process would have taken me 5-7 days, it was done in 3. This included all the checking.
I ended up with a complete list showing births and deaths for each ancestor in my data with connections to Queensland. Marriages were handled differently, but used the same date format.
All this time, I was still in contact with the library and school. The school started to give me the runaround! Flights and accommodation were booked with a no refund policy. I did take out insurance, just in case!
AI Progress.
The lists are sorted. Now, I need to create a schedule for each day. My thoughts were about having productive days. Knowing I’d be sitting mostly at a microfilm reader, I would need breaks plus lunch. I asked AI for some ideas and got very good advice even being told regular breaks were necessary – get up and walk around. There was also a suggestion of using eyedrops as my eyes may dry out from the environment that I would be in! Yes, I did use eye drops when I was there.
Schedules.
With the assistance of AI, I was able to design my schedule with 15-minute breaks plus an hour lunch. You can see an example here, next to this text. I created a schedule for each day, with Thursday being different to accommodate for the school visit. The schedule was three pages in length. On page 2, there was a provision for a day end wrap-up, with the last page showing a summary. This summary included materials reviewed, key findings, tomorrow’s priorities and a space for additional notes.
By this time, it was nearing the end of April. With about four weeks to go I double checked everything – yes, even the library, airlines and accommodation. I wasn’t sure about using either a taxi or an uber for travel from the airport. This was something for a little later. It always pays to follow up.
Preparations.
Coming into the final week before my adventure begins. All my ancestor lists have been combined into one and sorted by date. My schedules are printed. (I know I am repeating but it is part of the preparation.)
I am checking the weather to sort out clothes for the trip. The last thing to be packed would be my laptop plus all cords and plugs etc including USB drives. The reports, schedules and laptop are all for my backpack as part of my carryon luggage.
Disappointment.
I don’t know the exact date of my follow-up call with the school but I do know the response I received was on the Friday morning before travelling on Sunday. It was basically a two-liner saying I would not be able to view admission registers for historical purposes but if it were for legals (that’s the school’s language), I could. This is quite a typical response from a public servant! I am an ex-public servant and that’s how things are dealt with. No reasons were given.
As you can imagine I was not a happy bunny. At no point during my contact with the school was any of this mentioned. The direction came from the acting principle!
Because of this disappointment, I had to reorganise the Thursday. I removed the school times and added in extra time slots at the library, taking into account that the library did not open until 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday. No one will stop me when I’m on a roll! A reprint of Thursday done.
And this is the ends Digital Strategy.
See you in 2 weeks for Helpers & Hearts.
Acknowledgements:
The first two pics are my work… If you are intended to use in your own work, acknowledge my COPYRIGHT.
The other pics are from within WordPress via Pexel.
Ancestor Family 