Week 35 - Tax Season

Arguably the hardest aspect to resolve with preconceived, pre-departure notions of what service will be like is that we are still a part of a bureaucracy. While the entire application process, frequently lasting more than a year, is an enormous mess of paperwork, signatures, background checks, and interviews, I expected it to end when I got out into the boondocks. Here we often feel like we’re out in the middle of nowhere, free to do virtually whatever our own sense of morality and work ethic let us get away with. Most of the year this is true; then again, there’s that one nagging downer on the calendar. Like tax season for real adults, there comes a time where we are held accountable for our actions over the previous year. And like real adults, we hate it. We hate it a lot.

It’s called the Volunteer Report File, or VRF, and it chronicles everything we do related to our job over the fiscal year, from baseline surveying to running workshops, school visits to addressing the city council.

I don’t doubt the need for such a tool. As much as I despised doing it, I never once questioned that it wasn’t an important diagnostic by which Washington can measure the Peace Corps’ efficacy. Rather, it’s just so boring. Beat your head against the wall and run screaming for the internet boring.

Vaguely Recalled Failure

As I look through my datebook, deciphering scribbles in black and blue ink, I take stock of what I’ve done in the last 5 months since getting to site: Visited each school (30) once to introduce myself and give a broad overview of what Healthy Schools is about; Visited each school (15, my half) once to conduct baseline surveys of the current infrastructure and health practices; and conducted a workshop in 7 schools delving a little more in depth about how to become certified as a Healthy School.

Beyond a few little odds and ends, that’s about it. 52 school visits in 5 months. Even only going to one school per day (I try to go to two or more), that’s only going to work every other day. In any other field in the world I would be fired. Here, in the land of strikes and unplanned holidays, it’s about par for the course.

The VRF sits dauntingly empty. There’s no way to increase the margins or make the font size 13. Just me and the tragic loneliness of the reporting tool.

            Very Real Frustration

I enter the same details again and again and again: School name, number of workshop leaders, subject presented…In a minute I can no longer force myself to go on, and take a break, wallowing in the shared misery of all the other volunteers expressing their frustrations on Facebook.

“Mine didn’t save,” said several status updates. “There goes 4 hours of work, down the drain.”

I press the save button on mine 3 times in a row, still not convinced it’s telling me the truth when the program tacitly says “enough already.”

A lot of it is just the typical complaints of burdened shoulders. I certainly give in to it—frequently, in fact—and cannot begrudge anyone partaking in the same.

After a short period I decide that others’ melancholy is increasing my own, and I go back to the form.

            Verbosely Reported Fluff

How can I make my own accomplishments seem more grandiose than they were? I use eye-catching filler words, like vis-à-vis, indubitably, and hence. Hopefully my lexicon will be conflated with an equal dedication to precision and efficiency.

Three hours later I’m finally done. Entries litter my file, and all of the essay questions (“Describe a success you’ve had”) are completed.

I email it to my bosses, and then lean back, exhaling. Tax season is done for the year.