A Call to Military Service

2 weeks ago....
So I was a bit confused when I walked into my office around lunch as someone called for one of my office mates, Cem (pronounced Jim). I knew that I had seen him this morning when all seemed well, only one of the other girls said that he was at the doctors. ???I didn't think there was anything wrong with him.Turns out that the only thing wrong was a call to do his physical test to enter his mandatory military service(5 months and 5 days for him since he's a college graduate - 18 months otherwise, or a year as anofficer). Now, as you can imagine this isn't exactly a great time for him to be leaving for 5 months -especially as we're already covering for a teacher who is out for 2 months with a broken heel. So it seems(if I understand my department right) that the school took Cem and another teacher to a doctor today to get a signed physician's form saying that they are ill (you don't ever use the word sick here) and are not physically capable of taking the entrance test.Voila - Cem's put off his military service until at least the next time they take a new group in. I know the plan is for him to miss the last month of school and then do the majority of his service over the summer. I'm interested to see what else has to be contrived in order to make this timing work out.

The amusing thing is the debate that is now going on in the school. If he has a doctor's note saying that he is "ill" (never mind that no one can read what is actually wrong with him on the note) does that mean that he can't be at school either? Even though he is perfectly fine? You start to see where I get a little muddled thinking about all of this. Cem's pushing for coming and working but just not signing anything - in other words making it so that there is no official documentation of him being at school. After all it seems like the signatures are what really matter here,not the actual truth of the matter. I'm curious to see what is decided. Will we have an invisible colleague (more common then you'd think as technically the elementary school is supposed to only have Turkish teachers - only a problem when ministry representatives show up to observe the school for a week) for a couple of days, or will we have to pick up the hours he normally covers.

It's times like this that I really see the difference between Turkey and the US. But in some ways I guess it's all about working the system to get what you want. It is just so much more apparent here that you are working the system....

update...
Turns out that Cem did have to miss class for a week. We picked up his hours and he came back to school Thursday. The funny thing is that it isn't over. He still has to present his excuse to the board. Only when he left to do it after spending a couple of hours all he got was a date on which he has to return in order to officially present his doctor's note. I do wonder when this thing will be finally finished.