‘Warning! You have not finished mandatory agreements that you must review and complete according to university policy and/or NY State Public Health Law.’

My inbox has been flooded by American bureaucracy. Before I am allowed to set foot on the campus of the University at Albany, they must know everything of me. What my military status is (I probably wouldn’t last a day in the battlefield), how many spouses and children I plan to bring with me (from the numerous affairs I’ve had, of course), what I would like to be called (Dr. Timotheus, please).

Some of the information they require me to read is downright scary. ‘Meningococcal meningitis is a potentially fatal disease that affects about 150 students on college campuses every year,’ one of the warnings reads. My medical knowledge is rather lacking in the field of potentially fatal diseases and until a few days ago, I had never heard of meningitis. Now I feel like it is already threatening my life. Not that the university is going to help me with anything – they just need me to acknowledge that they have informed me about the disease.

Other forms are typically American. In this land built by immigrants, people are extremely aware of race and ethnicity. Thus, the university wants to know whether I have Latin American roots and if so, from what specific area. With race they are less detailed: while the native people of Hawaii get their own button, so do the 4,5 billion people of Asia.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting to fill out the form. The form that will allow me to actually go to the US: my visa application. And precisely that form is stuck somewhere on a dusty desk in upstate New York surrounded by a hundred similar forms. America might be a land of endless possibilities, but it is also a land of endless paperwork.

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