A Paper address Book?

When I was a teenager, someone gave me this address book. In it are addresses from that era, and many more up until about 1997 when I put my addresses onto my computer. Since then that electronic record has grown like wildfire, and now even includes the useless email addresses of students long since graduated and for whom those old college addresses are no longer current. The old book languishes in a drawer, unused. I have recently realized that could be a mistake.

That address book has certainly had its uses. When I first applied to come to the United States it helped me. More recently it facilitated someone’s application to take a bar exam. Last week a student came to me in tears because she had no such paper record, and was unsure if she could qualify for an internship without it.

You see, in recent times we have taken to plugging new addresses into our electronic “address books” without regard for the fact that in the process we are eliminating the previous address. There is no ongoing record. The student had been asked to provide, for a State mandated background check, the dates and addresses of every place that she had ever lived. I was required to do the same thing – twice, the two approximately one year apart – when I applied to come to this country as an emigrant. So was my son when he applied to take a Bar Exam for the state in which he lived.

When we use a paper address book, the old addresses are simply crossed out, and the new one written below it. The old ones remain visible. They form a permanent record, from which I was able to extract the information that my son needed regarding his frequent youthful moves.  With experience, I have taken to noting the dates of moves also. The student had no such record.

Do you?

Might there come a time when you need to provide a list of every place, including the exact address, with dates, where you have lived? Might your future career depend on it?

Increasingly, this type of information is needed. Four years ago, the student would have not needed to provide such an information. Today she does. It is not only applicants for different kinds of certification who need it. As states move in the direction of background checks for all forms of care-giver, counselors, and others who work with “special needs” populations, the trend is likely to grow.

That is why, if you have no permanent record of addresses, I recommend an address book, the solid, long-lasting kind, as a desirable last-minute stocking stuffer.

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