There are 5 step in the process of becoming a PCV:
(1) Applicant - Your status after submitting your application.
(2) Nominee - Your status after your application is accepted, you receive and return your
second application, go to your meeting with your recruiter, and are deemed suitable for
service. At this time, your recruiter nominates you to a specific PC program.
(3) Invitee - Your status after you complete medical, dental, and legal clearance from PC
Washington D.C. and are invited to the specific program you were nominated to
departing for a specific country on a specific date, usually departing 1-3 months after
the date you receive the invitation.
(4) Trainee - Your status after you arrive at Staging, the three-day Peace Corps event in
the United States that directly proceeds departure with your training group.
(5) Volunteer - Your status after successfully completing the three-month intensive
training program in your host country. At this time, you are sworn in as a PCV and
depart from your training site to your site assignment.
My roommates Lindsay and Morgan came to my rescue and loaned me a few bucks for gas. Thank God! I showed up in La Jolla, on the UCSD campus and navigated the parking structure. I managed to locate my recruiter's office, and I felt at ease right away. We walked out onto the balcony and sat at a picnic table overlooking a large area where students were congregating. He asked me a lot of questions regarding my educational background, technical background, and personal information, as well as how I would respond in certain situations, i.e. if I were to get into a serious relationship before departing for the Peace Corps, if I were a vegetarian in a country where eating meat was very important, etc.
At the end of the interview, he told me that he would nominate me! I was so excited I could hardly stand it. He told me that in June there would be a program departing to Africa, and in September and October, programs to Asia. After the actual interview had ended, I remained there for a while and we chatted about his Peace Corps experience in Zambia. As soon as I went back to my car, I whipped out my cell phone and called my parents. I felt like I had gotten through a critical point in the process. Little did I know that December 11, after being officially nominated to the Environmental Education & Management sector in writing, I would also receive the most giant medical packet I had ever seen.
They wanted eye tests, dental x-rays of every tooth I had, a psychiatric exam, an HIV test, a TB test, fingerprints run through the FBI/CIA/DOJ, and you wouldn't even imagine how much paperwork. Two weeks later, I graduated from San Diego State and returned home to Northern California. I found a job working at a residential psychiatric facility for adolescents, situated on a 1000-acre ranch in beautiful Nevada City. I began diligently on the medical, dental and legal clearance process, but between rescheduled appointments, Kaiser sending my information to the wrong place, things getting lost, and too many other ridiculous situations to waste my time (and yours) mentioning, the last of it all didn't get in the mail until around the end of May. I photocopied the whole thing, and sent it off. I knew at that time that leaving in the summer was most likely out of the question.
So with the ball finally back in the Peace Corps' court, I waited. I checked my status online at the Peace Corps website every day for over two months, until I started to wonder if their links were broken. I started to get discouraged. After 6 months at my emotionally and physically trying job, I had resigned earlier than I should have, was broke, and so bored I couldn't stand it. Every time I ran into people I didn't see often, they always wanted to know what was happening with my going into the Peace Corps. I explained about ten thousand times that I was still waiting. I started to sound like a broken record. I even wondered if, after all this effort, I would get rejected for some reason I never saw coming. Weird things like that seem to happen to me sometimes. I spent long summer afternoons at the river, reading, pondering the universe and trying to think about anything but the fact that I was still waiting. I took the big, scary box down from my closet that contained twenty years of pictures and negatives, and made approximately 17 acid free Creative Memories scrapbooks, complete with stickers, hand-traced and cut paper frames, and strict chronological order for the photos. I also bought nearly one hundred sheets for negative storage, and spent many wee morning hours trying to put everything in order. I felt compelled to process my life, in order to put everything that I had experienced in some kind of compartment, to be packed away neatly in the past.
And then, on August 4, 2002, I logged on to the Peace Corps applicant status page and saw that my medical clearance, the only clearance that still had been listed as "pending" was listed as "cleared". I was so shocked, I thought, maybe they really are going to take me. Everyone told me, "We knew they would!" I prepared a will and living trust and applied for student loan deferment. I started checking the website every day again, and only a few days later, I logged on to see that my status had gone from nominee to invitee. I literally choked on my juice and felt it burn as it traveled down my throat the wrong way. According to the website, a formal invitation had been mailed the day before, and that upon receiving it I would have ten days to accept or decline. But it gave no hint as to what country, or when I would leave. I was sitting in the spare room in my mom's house, the window was open, and some neighbors were standing in front of my house. I screamed as loud as I could. I have always been something of an inhibited person but at that moment, there was no way I could have controlled my emotions. I literally had been waiting for years for this moment. I jumped out of my chair, again I grabbed my cell phone, and I called my brother in Oregon, and screamed in his ear too. I called my parents, and speed-dialed about 30 other people as I leapt around alone (thank God) in my house. They were all happy for me, but annoyed that I still didn't know where I was going, but all I could think of was, I'm in! I'm in! I'm going! I am going to be an environmental educator!!
Starting the next day, during the two-hour window when our mail was usually delivered, I kept vigil before the dining room window. I didn't even wait for the mailman to leave before rushing out to see if my invitation packet was there. Day after day, it didn't come. Then on August 14, I went out, and again, it wasn't there. I went back in and flopped on the couch, feeling dejected. I called my mom at work to bitch that it still had not yet arrived. A while after I hung up, the doorbell rang and it was the postman. I flew to the door and yanked it open. He apologized for overlooking one special package, and handed me...my invitation packet from Washington D.C., and then left, having no idea what it meant to me.
I started shaking. If I would have tried to talk, I think it just would have been a nervous shriek. I went and sat on the floor with the packet in front of me. I did breathing exercises for nearly ten minutes before I got the courage to open it. Finally, I got a huge smile and opened it. Inside was a big folder, "Peace Corps Invites You To Serve". I skipped over the congratulations coverpage and all the Staging information, and scanned every word I saw for a country name. My eyes finally settled on my Volunteer Assignment Description. Macedonia! I ran to our globe and searched for Macedonia. No luck - our globe was from before Yugoslavia broke apart. I grabbed a new map of Europe from a National Geographic magazine, and there it was. Macedonia, my new home. I took a couple of days out of my ten day window, and then called and accepted my invitation.
The next three months were filled with packing lists, twelve-hour a day internet research, and ordering Macedonian language books online. I bought luggage, I wrote to friends, I booked flights to visit my brother in Oregon and my sorority sisters in San Diego. Reality was sinking in, and there was a lot of work to do. I could barely sleep for weeks, because I realized that I was walking toward the edge of that cliff I had been running towards all throughout college. My dreams were finally coming true. I was going to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.