The title of my blog never sounded very Peace Corpsy or Costa Rican. It has none of the Pura Vida’s of my counterparts or the lost in the jungle/saving the world of countless volunteers across the world. The title, itself means a lot more than just my service here in Costa Rica, it is my journey from college student to adult, because I’m sure we can all admit when you’re in college you still aren’t quite an adult yet. Another struggle I want to make clear is the difference that one has when they can peer into a computer and have everything they could possibly want at their fingertips, sometimes even searching for more distractions as the task at hand can be completed within minutes and then forgotten. This is not a luxury I have living in a town with limited cell phone service and even more limited internet access. My internet access comes usually once a week on a particular day if I don’t want to walk 3 km downhill and then returning uphill the same 3 km. On these days I usually spend a minimum of roughly $20 for use of internet, food, and transportation, these costs rise if I have to buy food that can’t be found in the small local pulperia (a small store that provides basic food and snacks along with other household goods: light bulbs, cleaning supplies, some office supplies), make copies, send faxes, and get other supplies that again can’t be found in my town either. Now, I’ll admit my life is a lot easier than many Peace Corps volunteers. I have no boats to ride, no long walks in the sun (most of my way is shaded by trees), and most of the dogs I pass are friendly or at least lazy. But having internet for a limited amount of time makes you go crazy.
The past five months, maybe six, I have been applying to graduate school. This has meant signing up for, studying, and taking the GRE, finding out information about the schools I want to attend (and whether they have scholarships and fellowships for Peace Corps volunteers), getting deadlines correct, making sure I have everything they specifically want, sending in information or requesting that outside sources send in this information, contacting old professors for recommendations, and trying to think about why I would be the perfect candidate for their program all the while trying to move along projects here in Costa Rica.
A little metaphor for my brain every Friday I come into work on this would be a 1,000 piece puzzle that you dump out on the table. When you first look at it, it’s just a mess of some colored pieces and some brown pieces. Here and there you may recognize a feature on the box, but most of it is just a mess of blues, greens, and browns. You must sit down and flip over all the pieces, or you may first (as I always do) separate the outside pieces from the middle, chucking all the middle pieces back into the box to be looked at later. Arranging the outside is like getting all the facts together for applying to grad school. When to apply, what documents you need, who you need to contact, what exactly are you applying for. You slowly put together the puzzle, but oh dear what do we have here, some missing pieces. Are they on the floor? Did they get lost with the middle pieces? You search the floor; you dump out the box again and slowly go through each piece checking for that straight edge. Of course, I usually don’t notice the missing piece until I get back home and cannot do anything about it for another week. So I will make a little note in some notebook that is filled with other little notes that will probably get lost amid that confusion or left at home when I go to the bus stop. Also, since I have other things going on in my life, work and distractions to keep myself from going crazy such as news and music, it’s like having multiple puzzles going on at one time. I’m going back and forth between gathering information for an English class, pulling together different aspects of a grant, and trying to find out whose being elected where and why it matters. My brain is a Jackson Pollock painting, but there is no organic chaos happening; It is just chaos.
When I have the entire outside complete and ready or at least have given up trying to find the missing pieces, they’ll show up eventually or I can’t waste my time anymore searching for them, I set off to do the bulk of the work. Slowly, I find the same colors and start putting them together. I start gathering up all my transcripts and resumes, my scores and grades and I send them in. I contact my recommenders and get a different username and password for each application which can only be completed online. The one thing I can do offline is write the Personal and Aspirational Statements, but these are not without catches. Each ask a different thing from the prospective student, whether it is to focus on your past or your future or the amount of words you can use. Some ask for the miniscule 250 words only (I don’t remember the last time I wrote so little), or give you the generous 1,000 words to sum up your entire life: past, present, and future (not to mention why their school is superior to all others, even though you have 4 or 5 other schools that would do just as well).
Amid all this chaos, you’ve realized you’ve sent your GRE scores to the wrong school, used the wrong deadline for your recommenders, you forgot, or they never told you, that to get the application fee waiver, you needed to send in a special letter signed by the Peace Corps director stated that yes you are a Peace Corps volunteer a month before started your application, the universities still haven’t received your transcripts you asked to have sent two months ago (it didn’t say you had to pay, but knowing the system you probably have to go back to your alma matar sign five different forms, promise your first born, and go back the next week asking to talk to the Wizard of Oz, who turns out to be a computer that just asks you to push a little button with “Send” written neatly in white Arial Black font. “It’s really not that complicated” the lady behind the glass, bulletproof wall tells you), and you remember that personal statement you wrote last week, well now you’re having doubts about it being your best work, the thing that will really make you stand out, make it impossible for them to say no. Now you think “Shit, a five year old could have written this”. Important emails requesting information you should have had two weeks ago will not be answered until 3 p.m. when you have already boarded your bus and won’t have a chance to find until next week, in which you’ll have to send another clarifying email, or make a phone call on Skype that may or may not work because your microphone is picking up too much background noise, or somehow doesn’t work when making an outside call to an actual phone.
The conversation will be mostly like this: “Hello.” “Hello?” “Hello?” “Hello, can you hear me?” “Hello?” Click. Then, you will write an email explaining you are a Peace Corps volunteer and phone calls to the States are practically impossible, so anyway you can do this through email would be terrific, thanks for being so kind and understanding to someone serving the country, blah blah blah. Don’t worry all that grandiose self-pity wears on my nerves too (oh wait, this whole blog entry is a grandiose self-pity fest, ok I give up, feed my ego and pat my head saying how much you admire me, thanks.)
Anyways, long story short, just applying for grad school has been difficult. I still worry about whether or not I’ll make the January 15th deadline for those looking for scholarships and fellowship, and sometimes I want to write a letter to the board of admissions, maybe attaching this very blog entry to it, explaining that I must really want to go to their school after putting all this effort into applying to their school which may or may not even get me my dream job after all is said and done. And maybe that third year serving your country won’t be so bad. I mean, after this a room full of out of control children that smell your lack of classroom management skills and trying to sound like a nine year old instead of a two year old to a group of 40-50 years olds who in reality have a lot more experience then you do is a piece of cake.
