Designated School Official

In my first job working with international students, I was authorized to be a Designated School Official, or DSO, which means I went through training and an application and was approved to have the authority to create and sign certain U.S. immigration documents that international students need and use. When you are no longer employed with these places, your account will deactivate, which had happened to me when I left jobs with DSO duties.

Now in my new job, they needed me to be DSO, and quickly to help with their backlog and heavy spring workload. I had assumed that since I had been DSO before all they would do is a quick background check in the meantime and then re-activate my account, so I'd probably be up to speed within the week.

Wrong! It took forever. Way longer than  normal or anticipated, and I think my boss was very eager to have me take a lot of this off her plate. It took a little over a month, so when it finally happened, she was overjoyed. She celebrated by calling me into her office while she was meeting with a student, to have me sign a student's document, for the first time with them. And then yes, this happened.

We explained the situation to the student so he wasn't freaking out thinking I was doing something illegal or that I didn't know what I was doing. Although you can see he doesn't appear to be sweating it much. Ha. I told him to frame that signature and give it to his grandchildren one day.

But the story gets better.

Today, she walked into my office to present me with a FRAMED copy of this picture. She had outlined it and wrote "DSO" and put it in a wooden frame for me, which is now in my office. And I don't even have my diploma in here!