My Recruiter

I had a conversation with my recruiter today. She encouraged me to make personal contact with the Placement people. She is going to send me contact information for someone in that office.

There is some competition, she tells me, because the Peace Corps deliberately "overbooks" the positions, though probably not on a one-to-one basis. The idea is to cover all of the positions because of course, some applicants will not make it through (not difficult to imagine) or will drop out in the process. Of late, fewer people are dropping out due to the economy. This makes sense, but it's all just idle speculation for me. The Placement process is different for each type of program. I understand, for instance, that nominations to agricultural programs is much less competitive than, say, nominations to educational programs. Apparently it's more difficult to find enough qualified people for agricultural programs, whereas the largest majority of applicants are qualified to teach.

I am glad now that I didn't choose to accept the nomination for teaching. I'm very happy with the "Special" nomination. I think I have a very good shot at it. The recruiter wants me to have a conversation with Placement about my language background. Her confidence in me is very high. I want to think that's because she knows more about the position than she can tell me. She denies knowing anything more than she's already told me: that the position is in the North Africa/Middle East, that it requires a (minimal) background in the visual arts, and that staging will happen in September. That was enough for me to decide I wanted the nomination. Now I just have to be patient.