all in, part 2

i submitted all the new forms yesterday -- updated resume, volunteering details, my transcript, the supplemental education experience form, and my CLEP results!  they updated my status online, and the next step will be to hear from the Placement Specialists in the next few weeks!  they'll determine whether my skills and suitability match their needs.  i don't know for sure whether the medical evaluation is happening in parallel or if it's on hold until the placement work is done.  but i finally feel like i'm on my way!!

spanish exam

i emailed with the placement assistant at PC again yesterday.  she indicated that the next step after submitting the additional paperwork is that a Placement Specialist will complete the final skill and suitability assessment of my application.  they may contact me for more input and then will decide whether i can continue on in the process.

i let her know my intention of taking the spanish test so that i could be considered for latin american placements and asked whether this was something i should wait to talk to the placement person about, or whether i needed to have it done asap.  just guess what her answer was. 

This would be something you need to do before they look at your file, as they won’t be able to consider you for Spanish speaking programs until you can prove that you qualify for them.  However, it is important to know that simply qualifying for these positions is not a guarantee that we will be able to place you in them.  Also, you should be aware that many of the Peace Corps Volunteers that serve in South and Central America work in local languages and not in Spanish.   if you would like to take the CLEP in order to be considered, you would need to do so relatively soon.  if you are still unsure but have an idea that you will pass, you could hold off and then discuss this further with your placement officer, but this may cause a further delay in being able to be placed in a program, so i would recommend taking it as soon as you are able if you are planning on doing so.

so… i decided to throw everything up into the wind and i took the test THIS MORNING, without further studying or prep.  of the 36 different exams that are offered, the one with the single highest score required to get credit is … yep, spanish.  you need to get 63 on a scale from 20 to 80.  even the other language exams (german and french) do not require such a high score, and all of the other subject areas require only a 50.

and this was my result:

what do you know?  despite significant trouble understanding spoken spanish and weakness in many grammar areas (and complete inability to speak it), i got a high enough score for PC and to instantly get 4 semesters of credit for college spanish.  just like that.*

now to the rest of that paperwork.

*  as if any of it was "just like that".

inactive status and other bad news...

on top of other bad things on monday, i happened to check my application status on the PC website and this is the message i got:  "your application has been withdrawn from active consideration…"

i called to find out what was going on and was told that due to budget reductions in washington… blah, blah…  i was supposed to have received an email on the first of august regarding this and was informed in no uncertain terms that it is the applicant's responsibility to make sure they receive PC emails.  how i'm supposed to know there is one so that i can be sure i received it was not something she could answer.  particularly when the error was on their part when they transposed two letters in my email address.  so she re-sent the email to me with instructions to respond right away to her (the original email only gave one week to respond, and if you didn't you became automatically inactive for consideration.)

so the email tells me that due to budget cuts, etc… the number of people being sent is reduced and i can't be placed in the timeframe they had said, so i should write back and let them know if i still wished to be considered for the future.  well of course i do!!  and here's the weird part – they now have me tentatively planned for january – march of 2012, exactly the timeframe i had hoped for.  now i am "active" again.

so not all bad news is all bad.  but wait, there's more.

today i get another email from them saying that normally the assessment for suitability is done after the medical and legal review, but because of these cuts they are now doing the suitability review first, basically to narrow the number of candidates even being considered.  not bad news in itself, but combined with their request for all of my teaching experience (which i don't really have), my final transcript and completion date for the teaching certificate (which i don't have), and a separate teaching experience/expertise form to be filled out (which i can't)… i may have a problem.  i suspect that my engineering experience doesn't count for anything anymore and only solid teaching experience will cut it.  which means i will be passed up if they have any kind of certified teachers applying.

(insert four-letter words here)

web status

the latest status on my official PC application...
the dental and medical forms are received!

all in

76.

76 is the magic number.

it only took 76 pages to fully summarize my current health, according to the pc.  that presumes, of course, that they don't ask for more info on any given topic, which is highly unlikely. 

my doctor's office has a sign that says the first form to be filled out is free, and each subsequent page is $25.  for narrative, however, it is $100 per page.  so when i showed up with my 37-page deck for her to fill out (mostly narrative, of course), i was a bit concerned.  i figured since she has always been so kind and accommodating with everything – and seemed supportive of the pc idea – that she would hopefully give me a break.  it took quite some time to get it all filled out (a couple weeks longer than what she had said it would), and i had to go back for a couple small things she had missed.  but she did give me a break, as i had hoped.  she charged me nothing to fill it all out.  (which reminds me, i need to send her a thank you card!)

although it has legitimately taken this long to get everything done – i had a mammogram follow-up and figured i might as well wait for that report before sending everything in – there is a part of me that didn't mind the delay.  you see, once i submit these forms, it's pretty much out of my hands.  from that point on it is up to the peace corps and i have no influence on how long it does or doesn't take.  the next steps as i understand them are for pc to go through all my forms and make a decision as to whether to accept, reject or defer me based on medical qualification.  if accepted, they move forward to try to find a placement that matches my skills and their needs, and i eventually get an invitation.  once the invitation comes, i have 7-10 days to accept or decline it.  and it can come as little as 6 weeks ahead of the leave date.  so, except for asking for an update of my resume somewhere along the way, after sending in my medical forms the next thing i hear from them could be a letter with a leave date in 6 weeks.  and that could take 6 months or 1 month.

(i imagine at some point they would tell me that i've been medically cleared, but i can't be sure of that.  i never did get anything in the mail officially telling me i was nominated.)

and just when I was thinking that waiting for this last report might make a slightly later departure date likely… as i re-read everything to be sure i was complete before sending, i noticed a part where the instructions said that forms will be processed not in the order in which they are received but in the order of the proposed departure date.  in other words, it's possible they will put mine up higher on the list because of this mythical october departure date.  eek.

so sending in these medical forms is sort of the last time i have control in the situation until it all takes off at light speed – or molasses speed, depending.  as much of a hurry as i was in at first to get the forms done and submitted, i am now comfortable with a little lag.  but i'm not trying to sabotage anything.  so i'm off to the post office.

and i'm "all in."  kinda literally.

The Great Tag Sale Event

ya wanna buya watch?  my sister and i used to mimic that line from sesame street, pretending to open a trench coat and look around like a black market dealer on the street corner.  ok, how about some legos?  surely you need a little bunch of mangled fake flowers for… something?

tag sale, yard sale, garage sale, whatever you may call it… there is a big one coming!

it is truly astounding how much stuff one can fit into a single house.  and how much can be accumulated in 21 years.  thanks to help from Kate, i have made a large dent in the mess in the basement.  let me rephrase that:  only because of Kate have we made progress in the basement.  i now have a garage full of stuff to sell in the subdivision yard sale in a couple weeks.  of course it's not organized or priced yet, but it's moving along. 

my rule is that once it gets to the garage, it never comes back in the house.  either i will sell it in the tag sale or it will be craig's-listed or donated.  i know there will be a second tag sale, both to get rid of stuff that didn't sell the first time and to allow me to get rid of stuff i haven't gotten to in the house yet.  there's a good chance i will be disappointed with the results of this first one, since i'm imagining everything gone and that's not very reasonable.  so there's a very good chance that if you show up at my house at the end of the day on august 6^th, i will be giving away tons of stuff.  just saying...

as before, i'm of two minds on this whole thing.  most of me wants to get rid of as much as possible.  this is completely contrary to how i've been my whole life, since i am a bit of a, shall we say, collector.  but there's a small part of me that fears i'm jumping a little fast and being a little bit extreme about the desire to simplify and get rid of everything.  what if i don't get accepted?  should i be keeping and storing some of these things rather than getting rid of them?  will i regret letting some of it go?

for example, there's an entertainment center and tv downstairs, along with couches, coffee & end tables, a vcr, a baker's rack and small phone table, etc.  and of course the game table and dart board.  except for the couches (long story) i could get rid of all of these things.  should i?  it'd be good if i may actually be leaving in october (still hard to believe that is feasible).  but it definitely would wipe out that area of the basement.  one area alone is not such a big deal, but when you add to it getting rid of stuff throughout the house, it starts to add up.

do i take advantage of the hoped-for draw of a subdivision's collective yard sale and throw it all out there?  or do i get rid of the stuff i truly don't need even if i were to stay and worry about the rest later, at a lesser and last-minute tag sale?  or somewhere in between?

it should be noted here that my mother is a tag sale/flea market/resale/consignment shop expert.  one would think that'd come in handy at a time like this, but… no.  she insists on living over 700 miles away.  which brings me to my backup plan:  everything gets stuffed into a ginormous truck and sent to her house for her to deal with it.  hey, it's better than the other plan that was proposed – burning everything in a large bonfire.

as politics make strange bedfellows, so it turns out does lori going to the peace corps.  as we were going through stuff last week, Kate had to keep reminding me that there were some things i should keep.  a problem, i assure you, i have NEVER had before.  "but why?" i found myself asking, "i'm only going to use them."

100 degrees

a few days ago it was 100 degrees here.  and we've had well over 20 days straight of 90+ degree heat.  (can't remember how many they said on the news, could have been 30-something.)  and it occurred to me that, whether i get sent to africa or latin america, this could be something i'll need to get used to.  eek.

haven't been very active on the blog lately.  i'll get back with updates soon.