It wasn’t all that long ago that I posted this:

However, instead of December 1st, the new timeline for the “2023” opening of the FAFSA form for those who will be college next fall is now December 31st; effectively January 2024. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more delays.

Delays on the early end, without changes (or without equal sized changes) in the late end deadlines, resulting in a squeeze for those trying to make use of systems, does seem to be the current status of a lot of systems these days. I’ve got three current examples within the last week, besides the FAFSA update I provided above: That’s true for the current Informatics conference that I’m being a reviewer for, that’s true for the medical bill that we’re disputing that we may have to pay anyway otherwise it’ll time out and go to collections as well as cause us to be denied future medical care, that’s true for a friend’s special needs adult child who through no fault of their own is facing eviction this month because of paperwork delays on their bills being paid for them.

Do you have a system for keeping track of all of the important deadlines/timelines in your life? Is it a system that another adult in your life could pick up and implement for you, if something were to happen to you?