I f there is one thing that has surprised me about this whole journey of gathering documents together to get ready to teach in South Korea, is that I’ve learned that I do in fact have the capacity to do things in a timely manner and not procrastinate. For as long as I can remember, I have always been a procrastinator. 
This meme here has always been my motto. You’re reading the words of someone who waited until the night before a 25 page paper was due to actually buckle down and write it (and I had known about it for 3 months). Up until the night before, I had only 3 pages completed. I stayed up for 41 hours straight writing it, with no caffeine. I couldn’t dream of doing that now. I also waited until the last minute to write a 33 page History paper too. There really is no minute like the last minute. I just wanted to highlight those two examples to show you that my procrastination game is STRONG. When gathering everything I needed for Korea, I very easily saw that procrastination was not a virtue. And right now, as I’m awaiting my visa, I’m so happy that I didn’t fall into my usual old habits of waiting until the last minute.
The consulate received my documents the day after I sent them. The following day, I received a call from a very, very helpful lady there saying that they couldn’t locate me in their system with the issuance number I received and then provided to them. She told me to check with my school/recruiter to ensure that the correct number was used and to email her back when I got the information back from them. Normally, I would become neurotic Courtney and start freaking out, thinking: Why is everything going wrong? What if my visa doesn’t get processed? What if this is some irreparable mistake that can’t be fixed and I can’t go to South Korea? The pandemic is picking back up over there–what if it gets so bad that they stop processing visas and mine doesn’t get processed because this error is impeding me from getting my visa sooner, before South Korea issues any more visas? and yada yada yada. BUT! My thought process didn’t go like that this time! I’ve been surprisingly chill. I figured that even if things got a little stalled, it’s okay because I’m leaving in a month and a half. So I’ve got a little time for everything to get sorted if something pops up. The processing time takes about two weeks, so with me applying for my visa as soon as I got all of the information I needed, I afforded myself a little “breathing room” buffer with my visa application timeline. Nothing was too urgent, therefore it saved my sanity and I was able to keep my wits about me. Honestly, this visa hiccup gave me a bit of peace. Like, what’s an international move without a visa issue (I nearly had a meltdown of epic proportions in 2015 when moving to London with my visa was sent to me and it expired before it even started. Travisa.com ended up being the real MVP; I’m happy to provide details to anyone who wants to hear about it.)?
My recruiter sent me more information to send over to the consulate. On Saturday (I couldn’t believe the consulate workers were operating on a Saturday), the same very, very helpful lady emailed me and said that the school might have to get in touch with the Korean Immigration Office to see if anything was done in error at the time of applying with my information. She tried over to the Korean office herself, but it was Sunday there so she couldn’t get a hold of anyone. I emailed my recruiters with the updates. And yet, I remain calm.
[Edited 12/14/2020]: My recruiter sent over the document that was used by the school to get my visa issuance number initially. I sent that over to the very, very helpful lady at the consulate. Apparently she saw what she needed to see on there and she told me they will be processing my visa and to check back for it in a couple of weeks! WOOHOO!
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