For all you aspiring volunteers out there, or just someone who is curious, I will soon post the details of the tedious year-long application process. Applying is a long road but definitely pays off when you make it to service in country. So check back soon :)
"Why did you join the Peace Corps?" This is a question I have been asked and have answered millions of times. Through the application process. To friends, family, and strangers before I left. To other volunteers. To community members in Peru. And it's a question we have to know the answer to - it helps remind you when the going gets tough. So here, in not so much of a nutshell, is why I joined the Peace Corps.
First - I love to travel and have always wanted to speak Spanish. I have had a special place in my heart ever since I came to Ecuador in 2007 and felt a calling, a gravitational pull to South America in 2012 as I was beginning to contemplate what I would do after I finished my MSW.
Next is job related. I went to USC to get my MSW after college but I don't have a really good reason why. I had majored in psychology but didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I was forever fighting the natural choice for me to be a teacher and my internships and jobs working as a therapist/counselor hadn't been a perfect fit so I decided to continue school with the broad field of social work that fed my desire to work in a helping field. There I learned more than you can imagine about grassroots community development to improve the situations of disadvantaged populations - that is literally the definition of what the Peace Corps does. Peace Corps training was, in many ways, a crash course into a macro focused masters in social work (the exact degree I have). Many Peace Corps Volunteers will go home to get their MSW after finishing service. By the end of my graduate degree, I could feel the natural pull towards a career in education growing and had even started to see the possible careers that connected my interests in education, social work, and psychology. But the Peace Corps offered the opportunity to directly use everything I learned in my MSW with a small teaching/psychology component to it.
Third (though these are not in any order) was the opportunity to serve others. With the Peace Corps programs and my education/experience/natural abilities, I truly believed I could make a positive difference in the world. That I could be proud of the work I had done and feel accomplished by having made somebody's life better. This is probably the part that has changed most as I have come to learn more and more you do not have to go on grand adventures or have certain titles to make a difference in the world.
It was an incredible opportunity to experience the traveling and the culture and the adventure I wanted while using my new degree. It would be a 2 year adventure before coming back to find a "big girl" job and truly enter the real world. I also desperately wanted to do something good in the world.
That's pretty awesome so why wouldn't I do it? I had the full support from my parents, siblings, friends, and entire community. I knew I had the ability and strength to do it. I have few responsibilities in life and as a single young adult, I had no other people to consider. It was the perfect opportunity to take an amazing adventure.
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