We got our first round of mail!

I received a call from a PC recruiter on Wednesday (March 24, 2010) regarding our applications. No big deal really, it was just that the addresses on our a applications didn’t match. My wife’s address was listed as the apartment that we are currently in, but moving out of this month while mine is listed as our future residence. The call took only a couple of seconds and we got the address situation cleared up. The PC recruiter stated that she was putting our initial packets in the mail later that day and that we need to have them back to the PC office in Dallas in 10 days.

We got our packets on Friday and have been working on them today. In the packets were an introductory letter and instructions from our recruiter, a National Agency Check (NAC) data form, 2 fingerprint cards, a legal questionnaire, a couples’ questionnaire and some information about how to improve one’s application.  The NAC check took literally 1 minute to fill out, really not a big deal. In essence it’s just asking you your name, birth date, SSN, things like that. The 2 fingerprint cards took only slightly longer at about 5 minutes, but were really just a repetition of the NAC data form. *A word of advise about these, in my experience do NOT sign them until you are getting fingerprinted, some jurisdictions may not accept them if you don’t sign them in their presence.*

Next is the legal form, this is really dependent on your legal status, and by that I mean any run-ins with the law. Could be quick (i.e. not having to fill it out) to taking a while. Having been through this process before they’re really looking for patterns and felonies. I really don’t think an Minor in Possesion from 5 years ago is going to keep you out, but if you are on probation from that… it might. Just make sure you’re as honest as possible on this.

Finally, we come to the couples’ questionnaire. This thing is a beast with 5 questions ranging from what do you expect from your Peace Corps experience to how well you do apart or living in cramped quarters. It took us a while to do it, mainly because we’ve experienced many of the situations that the Peace Corps would like answers to, we were afraid that we might sound a bit dismissive. It was a good exercise for us to explore our motivations and explain to each other, at least, how we feel we would handle these situations.

We’ll keep you updated as we get more information. Hopefully we can get fingerprinted on Monday or Tuesday.