I just want to serve!!

Got a call today from Susan while I was at work.  My heart started pounding.  This is it, I thought.  I'm going to hear where I'm going in February.  This is what I've been waiting for for over a year.

...Wrong.  Yet again, I've learned that wishful thinking is not a good idea with the Peace Corps.  She tells me that the program I was originally nominated for is now closed (a.k.a. full).  Not surprising, considering that I was nominated for it last March (grumble, grumble).  She tells me that this is very common and that what will happen now is that she will transfer my file to someone named Jason, who works more broadly with Community Development placements and he will find open programs for me.  She assures me that the important part is that she has qualified me for service (noted by the 'placement complete' on my toolkit, I guess), and that she's told Jason about my various strengths and her recommendations for my placement.  Jason should be looking to get me placed in the next two to three weeks, she says.

I'll admit that my eyes started welling up towards the end of this conversation, as I realized that getting placed in two to three weeks (probably at earliest) means I'm definitely not leaving in early February.  At earliest, this means last week of February or early March.  Unless of course "Jason" decides to place me sooner than expected- but again, I've learned that wishful thinking is a bad, bad, idea.  I had never let the frustration get to me before this point, but today I cracked.

The positive outcome of this is that once I got home, I got on my computer and starting browsing through other Peace Corps nominee blogs.  As another nominee wrote, I can't imagine getting through this process without the ability to read about other nominees sitting in the exact same boat as me.  I was especially comforted by one nominee who wrote about how she had not "practiced this line."  I'm not leaving in February.  I'm not leaving in February.

I've been building my plans for my life around an estimated departure date of early February since last March.  Admittedly, it's not the end of the world that I might be pushed back 3 weeks or so, but my fear, after reading other blogs, is that this actually means I'm not leaving until, say, June.  I am not mentally prepared to wait that long... I'm living at home with my mom!

Thankfully I have a temporary job position that is way more than I could have asked for. I get full staff-level experience because of their short-staffed situation; I'm doing work comparable to a Project Coordinator.  Also, we are working on a really cool DoS grant that is bringing Iraqi police generals and major-generals to the States for training, and the rotations start in mid-February... so now I might get to meet some of them!

The hardest part of this news, as other Peace Corps bloggers have felt too, is trying to explain to other people what is happening:

Oh my god!! They haven't told you yet??!  That's so ridiculous!! Is this normal?

Yes, it's normal.  I've been warned from the beginning that it could take around a year from application to invitation. 

So you have NO idea where you're going? They can't even give you a hint?

They don't know where I'm going either.  I was nominated to a broad area, Central and South America doing Community Development leaving around late January/early February, and now that's full.  They've also warned me from the beginning that my nomination is not a guarantee.  It's a matter of matching my skills with the availabilities, and unfortunately the paper-pushing in a federal organization with thousands of applications means that it takes a while.

Well my friend's wife's brother's friend was a Peace Corps volunteer... he/she got nominated in February and he/she left that June!  Are you sure something hasn't gone wrong?

I know, it sucks.  I'm qualified for service now (which means they definitely want to send me somewhere) and even before that I became a "valuable asset" once I got medically cleared- only 1 in 3 people who make it to that point get cleared.  Timelines vary a lot depending on the individual's skills and nomination- I was nominated to Central and South America doing Community Development, which I imagine is in high demand so I'm not surprised it's taking longer than average.  If I was an engineer or a farmer with no regional preference I imagine I would be leaving a lot sooner.

But I think my friend's wife's brother friend was nominated to Community Development too.  Yeah, definitely Community Development.

Well, I don't know.  This is just the way it is, but I really want to do this so I'm willing to wait.

What happens if they send you somewhere toooootally random?  I mean, are you sure you want to do this?  It seems like a really hard process.

I don't think the application process is a reflection of what the experience is going to be like.  From what I've heard, Volunteer life is a wonderfully independent experience, where I can basically shape my work in the host country into whatever I think is valuable... that doesn't sound a lot like the paper-pushing of a federal bureaucracy to me.  Peace Corps is the ideal program for what I want to do for the next two years, and the positive side of this waiting time is that I have started to consider how exciting it would be to go to a region outside of Latin America that I know less about.  Okay, maybe I've just gotten more desperate.  But either way, I am still committed to Peace Corps.*

*as long as they send me somewhere warm.

The hardest part about answering these questions is that they come from people who care about me and just want to express their frustration that Peace Corps isn't giving me the attention they think I deserve.  I want to be annoyed at this questions (actually, I am annoyed) but I try to remind myself that they come from a place of caring.  The problem is the daily question-and-answer sessions feel like mild humiliation, where I repeatedly say things like "maybe by my birthday... maybe by Thanksgiving... maybe by Christmas... any day now..." only to set up myself and those close to me for more waiting...  And more skeptical looks and comments, which only increase my feeling of alienation from people who don't understand why I'm doing this.

Again, I want to express my thanks to all the other Peace Corps nominees who have candidly shared their experiences on blogs.  I would be so lost without the stories of others, and it reminds me that I'm not being screwed over and I'm not slipping through the cracks.  I hope we all continue to grow in our ability to practice "patience," as the Peace Corps placement office likes to remind us :)