Adventures in Applicationland

After being a Peace Corps Applicant twice over the past three years, I've come to a simple conclusion about the Peace Corps Application Process: its job is to weed people out, to challenge them, to see if they'll quit, so the Peace Corps can be sure that living in a third world country for 27 months won't make them do just that.

As I said, I've gone through this application process twice. The first time weeded me out pretty quickly, and I think that was good. My desire to join the Corps the first time around wasn't very well thought out. I didn't know as much about it as I should as I struggled through the two separate twenty page applications, and at the first sign of difficulty I balked. I learned a lot from that, a lot from the nagging feeling that in quitting so easily I denied myself what could have been one of the most awesome and significant experiences of my life. I also learned a lot more about the Peace Corps, and when I applied the second time around, my expectations were a lot more realistic.

I had actually thought that after dropping my application the first time around that the opportunity was gone. Based on absolutely nothing except my assumption that once you apply for something and unceremoniously drop it that they wouldn't even look at your application again, I figured that I would have to wait years at the very least to ever apply to the Peace Corps again.

Fortunately I was wrong. Almost a year ago I was standing outside under the pine tree when I got an e-mail. Apparently the Peace Corps had more funding than they expected, and they wanted me to reactivate my application. I took a few days to think about it, to talk it over with my wife and some friends, but I knew the second I got that e-mail that I was ready this time, that I wanted to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.

The reapplication process was pretty painless. I called the office in Boston, told them I wanted to reactivate my application, and within a day or two a recruiter called me. We chatted a little bit and set up an appointment for an interview at the end of July. When that day finally came, I took the Dartmouth Coach down to Boston, stayed the night at this cool little boutique hotel in the Back Bay, and, the next morning, took the T in to the Federal Building. I had an excellent, rambling three-hour conversation with my recruiter. I was open to teaching English this time around (I wasn't open to it the first time around, and that was the main reason I withdrew my application), but my recruiter seemed more interested in my work on the Board of Trustees of Windsor County Partners and in my experience as an attorney. He asked me all sorts of questions, and apparently it went well because at the end of the interview, he said, "I'm nominating you to become a Peace Corps Volunteer." He talked to me about various programs he felt I was qualified for, and told me he'd get back to me in a couple of days about my nomination.

When I finally heard back from him, I was in luck. I had two options: a nomination for teaching English in Indonesia, or a "provisional nomination" as an NGO specialist in the Caucasus region. The second one was my dream position, and I said yes. He said he needed to get approval from Washington since I didn't meet the educational requirements for that position (hence it being a provisional nomination), but he was sure that between being a lawyer, a teacher, and on the board of a non-profit, they'd say yes.

Less than a week later, I got an e-mail confirming my nomination.

After getting nominated, the next step was the (miserable) medical and dental clearance process. I don't want to dwell too much on this because it was a significantly unfun period in my life, and more than once I thought it was going to do me in. The dental part sucked, mostly because I hadn't had dental insurance for years and thus needed a lot of work done. I was in the dentist so much over three months that I became fast friends with my dentist and his staff. At one point he even jokingly suggested that I should take over one of their spare rooms as an office since I was at the dentist more than I was at work.

The medical clearance went fine as I'm in relatively good health, but, having a few chronic conditions, my doctor had to fill out reams of paperwork and then had to fill out even more paperwork after the (dreaded) Office of Medical Services, or OMS, decided it didn't like some of the first set of paperwork. It worked out fine in the end, but there were a few hairy moments there that added to the grey streaks that the bar exam had already put in my hair.

Not two days after I got medical clearance, I get an e-mail from placement saying they needed an updated resume ASAP so they could begin placing me. Things started feeling very real. I combed over my resume, got everything together, put it in the format they wanted, and, less than two days later, I got them my resume…and then didn't hear from them for two months.

This was another stressful two months, because it involved no news whatsoever, just waiting for a call with a DC area code or an e-mail or something, something that would let me know if I was about to go live in a third world country for two years or if I should start applying for new jobs, or whatever. More grey hair appeared, until, finally, one day, I got an e-mail from my Placement Officer. She wanted to have an interview with me at 9:30 AM the next Monday. I said that would be fine, and spend the next week trying to anticipate what questions they might ask me and what my answers would be.

As luck would have it, two days before my placement interview, I completely and utterly lost my voice. I couldn't believe it: here I was, on the threshold of the interview that I had been preparing and hoping for over months and months, and I couldn't speak even a single word. I spent the entire weekend in bed, drinking copious amounts of tea, and not speaking a word to anyone for any reason.

When Monday morning finally rolled around, I could hardly speak, was on multiple cold medicines, and hadn't slept well in days, but I was determined to get through the interview, come what may. The interview focused mainly on two points: 1) why I thought it was OK to be a PCV without my wife/why serving without my wife wouldn't make me quit early; and, 2) why I got three speeding tickets 11 years ago (the answer I gave, word for word: "I was young and stupid."). Yes, these were the two things that the Peace Corps, after all these applications, all these essays, all these medical reviews, wanted to know about me. I guess my answers were fine because after the interview the Placement Officer told me she had something in mind for me, and gave me a vague description of being an NGO volunteer. I told her that was my dream job, and we got off the phone.

Two days later, I woke up at 8 AM, and checked my e-mail, like I do every morning. Whenever anything happens to your Peace Corps application, you get this e-mail saying that your online status has been updated and to check the website, and one of those e-mails was sitting in my inbox. Unfortunately for me, the website tends to choke my internet connection (yay dialup). At any rate, the way I found out I was a PCV was when I clicked "log in" and saw the URL change to a string of characters which included the word "invitee." I didn't actually get to look at the website until I got to work a few hours later, but I raised my arms up above my head--victory. Getting invited to the Peace Corps was one of the happiest moments of my life. After all the time, expense, and anxiety of the application process, it was done. I was invited, and I was crying tears of joy.

It's been a blur since then. I ran afoul of OMS for getting sick for a couple of weeks, but it all worked out in the end. I got my Big Blue Envelope, found out that I was, indeed, just as I wanted, going to be a NGO/Community Development Volunteer in Armenia, and that I was leaving June 1. I started taking steps to transfer my cases, started to figure out what needs to be done to sell my house, and started to make lists on packing, on things I need to buy, on forms I need to fill out.

As of writing this post I am about fifty days out from my staging date. That seems like forever, but I know that, before I know it, I will be on a plane to Armenia. And then, this entire adventure of the past few years, of slogging through the application process, getting more dental work done than I thought possible, and dealing with the inevitable bureaucracy, will be done.

Then the real adventure will begin.