The application journey

The coveted blue packet

                It's been over a year since I started the process which has led me to where I am now: two months until I leave for the country of Samoa. I thought I'd take a little time to recap my journey with the Peace Corps (PC) application process.

                My experience with the infamous PC application began over a year ago when I was looking for a graduate school program. I arrived in Spokane, WA in April 2011 after a year teaching English in South Korea where I spent a good chunk of my free time researching graduate school. I knew I wanted to do the Peace Corps Master’s International (PCMI) so the information on the website was invaluable. I was able to immediately narrow down my choices.

I finally decided on Gonzaga University for several reasons. First, I had already completed much of the application as I had had a similar experience of looking for schools after having taught English as a volunteer through Chile’s Inglés Abre Puertas program. Second, they were one of surprisingly few schools in general and especially in the northwest, where I had spent most of my adult life and wanted to return, that had a PCMI program in English teaching. And lastly, I was able to live with my aunt and uncle (Cheers Nancy and Dale!) who I could count on both hands the number of times I had seen them in my life previously. All of these together made the choice easy. But next came the process of applying to PC.

The online application doesn’t look very intimidating and, if you’ve put any thought into why you want to serve as a volunteer, it shouldn't be. Granted, it is several pages long and has several essay questions and requires references from specific areas. It’s easy to put it off as anything that is important but not urgent is. I managed to get in by early Fall 2011 after my first term at Gonzaga. If you plan on doing the PCMI program, I would encourage you to fill out your PC application as soon as you get accepted to a program. You could have it ready to go and just click the ‘submit’ button when you find out. In fact, I imagine you could even send it in beforehand. If things change as far as what program you end up in I’m sure you could change that information. The processes of applying to graduate school and to the PC are completely separate even with PCMI.

The next step was the interview prior to nomination. Mine took place in a small conference room on the first floor of College Hall at Gonzaga in October of 2011. The recruiter out of Seattle was in town for a visit so we planned a meeting. It was actually a really great experience for me. I don’t stress out about interviews—I’ve interviewed with tons of people and spent 2 years as an HIV-testing counselor during which I had to tell one person that their test results came back “reactive” and let me tell you, talking to a recruiter about why you want to spend 27 months as a volunteer in a developing country is far less stressful than asking people about their sex lives. I was nominated.

The invitation

Then came the medical packet. What a deceptively small packet that is. There are quite a few papers that come along with the packet but while reviewing them it seemed pretty straight forward. “I’ll get this done in a month” I said to myself. Right. I received the packet in late October and sent it off in April 6 months later. I didn’t have any conditions that needed to be double checked but I also had trouble getting appointments in a timely manner and some weird speed bumps slowed my progress along the way. I would suggest making appointments to see a doctor and a dentist a few weeks out as soon as you hear that you have been nominated. Make sure they know that you are going to need a pretty thorough examination and an hour isn’t at all unreasonable to assume. I went to a cheap clinic for people who don’t have insurance and they were only able to do 15-minute appointments with the doctor but the nurses were a huge help. I'll write another blog chronicling the issues I had so that you might be able to get around them if you have issues with your medical evaluation. For now I'll just say that there is a lot more to the process than the paperwork suggests. I don't mean that the PC is hiding information on the medical forms. I just mean that what looks like a single box to get checked off might actually take a few weeks where as entire pages of information may be able to be completed in a matter of minutes. I finally finished everything and submitted everything in April.

Then came the waiting game. What did I mess up? How long will it take to hear back? If I have to redo something is that going to set my start-date back weeks/months? I did end up having to do a few things here and there but I'll write more about those in my medical evaluation blog. There wasn't much I had to do though. I did have a few things that weren't related to the medical evaluation to complete: an updated resume and available date to leave but all that took only a week or so to complete.

At long last, on Tuesday, July 24th, I received my invitation. I literally screamed, jumped up and down, and ran around the house. After such a long process it was great to finally know where and when I was going: Samoa, October 5th staging.

My placement: Samoa!

I can't wait for this next journey and I look forward to keeping everyone updated through this blog. I've been in contact with a current PC Volunteer in Samoa (Thanks, Nancy!) and have been online and on Youtube looking at posts from lots of current and former Volunteers and it sounds like I'll have plenty of opportunity to write. 2 months, 2 days to go.