Why I wanted to join the Peace Corps, Part I

This post had become really ponderous, so I decided that I would just make it a running series of posts where I tease out the many reasons why I decided to do something like join the Peace Corps.

I first heard of the Peace Corps my freshman year of college when I was at a hunger banquet being put on by H2O. There were some informational brochures and stuff on a table near the exit and Liane and I perused them. Our response to Peace Corps service initially was a resolute hell no. Fast forward to two years later and I am in the process of applying and so is she, along with her fiancé (they have currently dropped out of the application process for their own reasons).

What prompted this decision for me was a number of things. Not the least of these was the question "what am I gonna do after college?"

At the time, I wasn't as interested in linguistics as I am now, so post-graduate studies wasn't an option since I didn't want to go to law school or medical school or anything like that. I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and to a degree I still don't. What I think sounds good at the moment is grad school for linguistics, but I'll sit on that idea for two years and then see if I still want to do it when I come back.

I reasoned that, if anything, Peace Corps buys you time during the transition from college to "real life". It seemed like a great way to obtain some valuable skills and also, you know, see the world. It didn't seem like a sacrifice to me, but more of a, "You mean the government is going to pay me to live and work overseas? And then pay me more at the end? And everyone who has done this says it was the most life-enriching thing they've ever done?"

These reasons ("Buys time", "Is fulfilling") are close to the front in terms of most important reasons. The obvious one, "Want to help the world", might be first. More on that later, though.