Is it cheaper in Kamchatka?

When something good appears as a possibility on the horizon, I seldom accept its reality until the very last minute. There are too many things that could go wrong, too many plans that could change. Some might call me a pessimist, though I think anyone who knows me would deny this claim. Rather, I simply do not wish to get overly excited only to be let down if it doesn't work out. Well, today I received a 220 dollar sticker, and now I'm pretty sure I'll actually be going to Oxford.

That pricey scrap of adhesive paper was my student visa for the UK. After many months of the opportunity on the horizon, I can now be fairly certain it will really happen. But it was no walk in the park. There were so many stages of clearance that I was nearly overwhelmed - acceptance to Oxford, acceptance to a particular college (a subunit of the university), loan clearance from the feds, financial clearance from my college, and finally, the grand-daddy of them all - visas.

The visa application process is the bureaucratic equivalent of Chinese water torture. After already having presented mountains of financial evidence to my college in order to be fully accepted, the UK government suddenly wanted me to do it all over again, and they wanted even more evidence than my college. It wasn't entirely logical to me - I know that the UK does not want me showing up on the doorstep of Parliament asking for welfare, but really, they should not be so concerned. After all, Oxford wouldn't let me come if they thought I would be unable to pay. But that doesn't seem to make much difference to the government.

What made the process particularly bothersome, though, was the lack of clarity about details of the application. They do have a good overview of how to apply for a visa on their website, but when a particular question was left unanswered, you were left with very few options. Hmm, shall I call the visa info service line that is $3 per minute, or should I go for the more egalitarian $12 flat fee? The variety was staggering. Then I realized that the $3 option was only available to me if I lived in Fiji, Azerbaijan, or the northwestern corner of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and then only on Tuesday evenings after 9:27.

Regardless, I called because I had important questions. While talking to the friendly telephonist in Bangladesh, hearing all of my words quickly echoed back to me at about twice their issued volume, I discovered that since the info services were not actually part of the British government (obviously having been outsourced), they could tell me nothing more than what was already on the UK website. But they would happily tell me what I already knew with plenty of static for only $12 flat fee (or $3 a minute from southern Waziristan province). Lovely.

Thus, after not having my questions answered, I just gathered what I thought important and prepared to send it off. After delving into the bowels of the earth to find all the necessary documents, my wife and I sent off more than 70 pages for our visa applications. I can't imagine how big the application would have been if I were not a resident of the United States, being on quite perky terms with our British brethren. Then the pain mounted even further.

I am normally the poster child of patience, as my family will surely attest. I never had to have anything RIGHT NOW as a kid. Take, for example, the time when I was at Disney World and waited easily a minute and a half after arriving to start begging for Dad to buy me that awesome invisible dog leash - easily. But when it comes to waiting for a visa for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study at Oxford, I'm toast. I simply can't take the pressure. A week and a day after the British Consulate received our application (confirmed by UPS), we got an email telling us they had received it. You may think that is good, but the email was so vague about processing times that it appeared we might not get the visas back in time to fly out if they had really just received the application. And we had sent it to them with double the amount of time they said that would be required to process the application. Not only would our overnight mailing a week earlier have been fruitless, but our super cheap non-refundable, non-changeable student airfare would also be flushed down the tube. All was clearly lost.

But then today, several days before we expected the visas to return even under good conditions, they showed up. It was a relief, to say the least. All of my fretting was for naught and we're going to England. I probably should have seen it coming. During the clearance process with Oxford this summer, the admissions contact at my college told me that Econ students from the US often worry excessively about getting everything worked out. I think she was just being nice, trying to make me feel like I was one of many. Whether or not there are many like me, and whether or not I am a pessimist, I surely caused myself more pain than necessary by worrying. We can do our best and that's it - nothing is going to change by worrying about it. And apparently, even the most obnoxious of bureaucratic processes can work out better than expected. I suppose the British government is not so bad after all.

So, here's to another notch in the belt of obvious lessons from (hopefully) comical stories. Maybe one of these days I'll come up with some idea that's not at least 5000 years old. Or maybe it's better to just heed the old ideas in the first place.

But hey, I'm going to England!