E-mail from Skills Desk

"Dear Kim,


I hope this email finds you well! I'm writing to you from the Peace Corps Placement Office in Washington, D.C. We are busy reviewing and evaluating your Peace Corps application to be sure that everything looks good for you to be approved for service. I reviewed your file this morning and I identified a couple items that needed follow-up.

I would like you to send me an updated professionally formatted resume which includes the following: Name, Address, Phone Number, Permanent E-mail, Summary of Skills, Education, Volunteer and Work Experience and Additional Interests or Skills. Please use a format similar to the following:
English Teacher-8th Grade                                                         March 2008 - Feb 2010


Kline Middle School, Chicago


Develop curriculum and implement interactive lessons


Teach 100+ students daily


Classroom and records management


Parent/teacher communications


Afterschool English Tutor



**Please be sure to tailor your resume to highlight the volunteer and work experiences that are most relevant to your nomination.

Please keep in mind that many computer word processing programs provide nicely formatted resume templates which you can use as a guideline. This document should be no more than two pages long and have exact dates (month/year) for employment/volunteerism. For volunteer experiences please note the approximate hours per week.

Please also complete and return the attached skill addendum with any relevant teaching or tutoring experience you have had.

Once you submit your updated materials, it may take some time before you hear from your Placement Specialist regarding their final evaluation of your application materials. Our current priority is to finish placing applicants nominated to programs with departures between October and December of 2010. Once we have filled these programs, we will begin working more with applicants nominated to programs with departures between January and March of 2011.

Best,

Morgan"
 
Whenever someone has said they got an e-mail requesting an updated resume, I always thought it would be a little short blurby e-mail.  Nope.
 
I updated/slightly re-did my resume and sent back the edu. skills addendum.  After completing those I went back into the "I just don't look too competitive on paper" thing.  Le sigh.
 
Hopefully I will be up and back to volunteering soon thanks to Miss Liz helping me out with her contacts.  I figure if I am going to be working in Gainesville (I start today!), may as well volunteer there too since it will get me out of this tiny town more often.

The Competitive Applicant.

I tend to worry, which is a bit odd for an eternal optimist.  As far as the Peace Corps is concerned, I worry about not being competitive enough as a nominee.  I updated my PC resume yesterday to include my current volunteering and just felt under-qualified!  I went to school full time while working 40 hours a week to support myself, so I had little time for volunteer work in college.  I did little random bits here and there, usually by helping the local We the People class prepare for competition, planning drives, or doing the here or there day of random volunteer helping, but never anything on-going. 

I have noticed most people's recruiters tell them to get some volunteer experience in this field or that, but not mine.  I took the initiative to find something regarding ESL to get experience in my nomination field.  This whole thing got me wondering if I was already considered competitive (for whatever reason.)  The verdict? I just discovered via PC Wiki that my degree is considered a nice plus for Secondary English Education assignments!  So that has me feeling a bit better and less worrisome about my qualifications.

After my tutoring session today with Jodi (my Chinese ESL student), I definitely realized how helpful it is to have a linguistics background when teaching someone to read and pronounce a language, so that too eased my mind on where I stand with PC.

In other news:
In preparation for my move to Florida at the end of this month (which I am 80% sure will happen), I discovered a new place to volunteer in the middle of the forest!  I need to start packing soon, so thank goodness my dryer is getting fixed this week so I can begin going through the millions of pieces of clothes I own to figure what to donate and what to keep.  Selling furniture, on the other hand, is a pain in the ass.  Le sigh.