these last couple of days have been a complete whirlwind. i was getting ready for work on tues morning when i noticed that i had missed a call from my PC nurse...ive been medically cleared for months so my heart literally sank. what could it be now?...i checked my voicemail and realized that it wasn't my nurse at all but my placement officer, Stephanie!!! i guess any number calling from PC headquarters comes up as the same extension on your phone. i never noticed until now. so that being said, i hopped into my car and called the number she left on my voicemail. i ended up contacting the PC bursars office or something of the like. no Stephanie to be heard of at the community development placement desk to their knowledge. after a good twenty minutes of being transferred from department to department, i hesitantly left a voicemail on the machine of a Stephanie, not sure if i had reached the right person or not. i rechecked my own voicemail to see if perhaps i had inverted the numbers and the voicemail was nowhere to be found! by the time i got to work, i was seriously considering the possibility that this was a placement mirage.
ill skip ahead to the good part. 3:30pm: I call the mysterious number yet again and Stephanie picks up. she doesnt call herself my placement specialist but just states that she has some questions for me. right off the bat she asks about my commitment to join the peace corps, what i foresaw as the major challenges of my service, how i would deal with frustration on site, my preference for a spanish-speaking country and general geographic preference. i answered each swiftly,or so i thought. in terms of spanish-speaking preference i thought i made it clear that id go where i am needed most, i just feel i could do the most good serving in a spanish-speaking country, as i already know the language. she thanked me for my time and told me i was qualified for service!
i drove home feeling elated that i had done all i could do and now it was time to just sit and wait. when i got home that evening an email was in my inbox. it was quite long but essentially stated that she doubted my commitment to the peace corps especially with regard to Core expectation #3 which reads that as a trainer and Volunteer, you are expected to serve where the Peace Corps asks you to go, under conditions of hardship, if necessary, and with the flexibility needed for effective service. essentially, i was being tested. she asked for two essays, one on my general commitment to the peace corps and another on how i would fulfill expectation #3. i wrote them the next morning and called around noon DC time to follow up. she thanked me for my thoughtfulness and promptness and then proceeded to tell me that she had a proposition for me. i could leave for french speaking africa in june to do youth development, however id have to have a proficiency to 2semesters of college level french by that time. i'm not good with languages to begin with. it took years of dedication for me to learn spanish hence my apprehension for a non-spanish speaking post. in this case, id have to learn french in about 12 weeks and then a local language when i arrived. she told me to sleep on it as she could sense my apprehension. i took it under serious consideration and concluded that it is the wrong decision for me. id be floundering to learn french with my current schedule and resources and then to add a third language on top of that during training would be disaster. again, i wrote a well-crafted email explaining my reservations thinking this may be enough to disqualify me altogether. i literally dont think i took a deep breath for two hours while i waited for a response. finally, around 530pm east coast time, when i had given up all hope of hearing today, she responded:
Thanks for your phone call and follow-up email. Thanks for taking the time to consider the options. It seems that the best way forward is to not consider you for a program requiring RL (Romance language + commitment to French). I’ll continue to look for programs for you that match your skills that either a) don’t have a language requirement (which doesn’t imply that it is an English speaking program, but rather that language training occurs in country) or b) has a Spanish language requirement. Once a program is found, we will issue an invitation.
I cant say im not relieved. but at the same time i am a bit deflated that its back to the waiting game. no end in sight...i just hope the right opportunity presents itself soon...i really hope that email was not a polite way of saying, "were now putting your file at the bottom of the pile. talk to you in a few months." i dont know if i can make it that long...
Yeow!
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck were all of those (partially) hidden messages all about? I thought that all PC concerns about language were resolved during the recruitment interview stage. Likewise, commitment, however I understand that a Placement Officer might want to verify there had been no diminishing of it during the wait since the time of the nomination.
Reading the PCJs of many applicants in somewhat similar situations gives a feeling that there is a huge variation in how the individual Placement Officers handle the files of the applicants. However, I strongly deny those feelings because I am certain that the PC has a fairly uniform process which is followed in coordinating the backgrounds and skills of the applicants with the expressed needs from all of the countries that have requested volunteers.
Focus on your present work, send a short 'thank you' email to your Placement Officer and then wait with PMA (positive mental atttitude).
Best wishes!