documents: sent!

I've just sent off a mailing tube with my life inside it: two diplomas, two official transcripts, a passport photocopy, passport photos, and some other documents. Catholic U. Daegu will take my diplomas and have them authenticated at a special office; they'll eventually be given back to me. As far as I know, nothing else will be returned. I'm chafing at the bureaucratic redundancies: one of the required documents is a "résumé" typed up according to CUD's own poorly formatted template; I much prefer my own slick-looking CV. CUD's "résumé" asks for nothing more than the CV I had already mailed them weeks ago; this must be a case of "we're too unimaginative to process data in any form but the one we understand." As Tom says, these folks have trouble thinking outside the box.

But a bit of bureaucratic annoyance is the price I have to pay for a much better life. I was sitting here the other day, calculating my hourly pay by using yearly hours versus yearly salary. At 15 hours per week, 32 weeks per year, my yearly work hours come to 480. With the advertised W29.4 million salary (not much by university standards, but we get paid vacations), that comes an hourly rate of W61,250, or roughly $56 an hour—more than 2.5 times my current gross earnings. I'll also have time to work extra days and earn cash on top my of salary (admittedly, some of this may have to be on the sly).

In any case, my documents are on their way to Korea. I paid an eyeball-popping $48 to send the paperwork as speedily as possible; everything's guaranteed to arrive on Friday June 14, one day later than what CUD's office is asking for. I hope my package arrives a day earlier than the predicted delivery date, but if it gets to Gyeongsan City on Friday the 14th, well, the CUD office will just have to sit tight and wait an extra day. Meantime, I'll be following the package with the tracking number that the post office gave me.

I feel bad for my diplomas, both of which have made the bumpy trip to Korea several times. They look battered, especially my diploma from Georgetown, which used to be beautiful—written in Latin, with a blue-and-gray ribbon fastened to one corner. Now, though, it just looks tired from all the traveling. I've never had the urge to hang either diploma on my wall, and given how beaten-up they both now look, why would I?


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