I just read about someone that had been waiting more than eight weeks for their medical clearance. Here is what he said:
- "My medical clearance was taking what I felt was forever. After 8 and a half weeks of waiting I called medical and talked to my reviewer. She said right now that 8 weeks wasn’t that bad and she hadn’t even got to my file…then she pulled my file from the stack and cleared me over the phone in about 10 minutes because I had called."
I've only been waiting two weeks, but as soon as I saw the above email, all I could think about was giving them a call...
I'm going to try and wait a little longer -- logically, I know that two weeks is not that much time to have been waiting.
3 comments:
The medical screening section is one of those in interminable waiting periods the Peace Corps warns you about. Eight weeks is quite normal. I think I sent my packet in at the end of August and didn't clear until midway through November. The more little health issues you have, the longer it will take, period, and that usually means people like you and I who aren't spry young 20-somethings can expect it to take a little longer. If you're nominated for November, you're still golden for time. Heck, they could take six months and you'd still have plenty of time.
Applying for the Peace Corps is a tedious process. It reminds me of a quote attributed to long-distance pilots I heard: flying is made up of long periods of sheer boredom, punctuated with brief moments of sheer terror. Something like that. Anyway, the PC application process is like that: lots of nothing, nothing nothing, ohmygoshincrediblenewsI'msoexcited, nothing, nothing nothing... etc. :)
It is very thoughtful for you to have brought up this issue of trying to bridge the gap between different cultures. I got these quotes from an ancient sanskrit text. Let me know if they make sense. The quotes mentions some universal principles apllicable to all living beings. I found them interesting so wanted to share.
"Persons who want to advance in superior understanding are advised to give up all envy of other living entities, whether in relationship to the body, words or mind.
Because of an awakening of knowledge, those who are intelligent, who are actually aware of universal principles and who are free from useless desires, control the self in the fire of spiritual knowledge, or knowledge of the Absolute Truth.
By making plans with determination, one should give up lusty desires for sense gratification. Similarly, by giving up envy one should conquer anger, by discussing the disadvantages of accumulating too much wealth one should give up greed, and by discussing the truth one should give up fear.
By discussing spiritual knowledge one can conquer lamentation and illusion, by serving a great devotee one can become prideless, by keeping silent one can avoid obstacles on the path of perfection, and simply by stopping sense gratification one can conquer envy.
By practice, one should avoid eating in such a way that other living entities will be disturbed and suffer.
One must conquer the modes of passion and ignorance by developing the mode of goodness, and then one must become detached from the mode of goodness by promoting oneself to the platform of pure unmotivated goodness.
All this can be automatically done if one engages in the service of the spiritual master(one who is already on that platoform) with faith and devotion. In this way one can conquer the influence of the modes of nature.
Thanks for the posts!
I agree that giving things up often has surprising and unexpected benefits.
For example, I know that that greed increases in me as I have more, and it significantly decreases in me as I give away those things that "seem" the most valuable to me.
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