Paperwork Junkie

I have a love/hate relationship with all things that paperwork. Nothing will set an SLP graduate student to shaking in their boots than the vision of their working folder suddenly reappearing in their swing-file covered in red pen marks (or purple glittery pen marks if you have a really nice supervisor). Revising SOAP notes and treatment plans dozens of times a week is simply seen as a rite-of-passage for the SLP graduate student.

By the end of our time in graduate school, the damage has been done. Keeping up with clock hours, SOAP notes, treatment plans, treatment reports, etc. has turned us all into slightly obsessed paperwork junkies. Over the past couple of days, I have realized the ridiculousness of this due to a couple of instances:

Situation #1: I am currently waiting on my teacher certification to go through. Now, I spent hours filling out this paperwork (checking and re-checking spelling and addresses, etc.) and promptly filed this with my University. Instead of just sitting back and letting them take it from there, I have been frequently emailing my employer asking if they have received my certification yet. People are very nice at first, but after a while, they do stop responding to your emails.

Situation #2: I fully intended on today being a lazy day, instead, shortly after waking up, I began to freak out about the location of my signed Program of Study paperwork. Now, this is a very important piece of paperwork that I will need to send to ASHA when I am applying for my CCCs next year, but my response was completely ridiculous. My adrenaline was pumping, I dropped everything I was doing, searched for the little piece of paper for 30 minutes before I finally ended up finding it in the first place I looked for it to begin with!

Situation #3: After the above scenario, I then proceeded to take another hour to go through all of my clock hour and CACFAR paperwork. Now, if you are completing grad school, again you know how important it is to have original copies of all of your clock hours etc. However, during graduate school I took this to the extreme. Not only do I have my original copies, I have multiple copies of the originals. I had to let go of the copies, and it actually wasn't that hard. I now have a very organized clock hour folder (locked away in my fire-proof and water-proof safe, for real I am not kidding) and have thrown away enough copies of the originals to probably save a tree.

The saddest thing is that all of this happened in the last 24 hours. For real. I told you I was damaged.