Possibly Joining the Peace Corps
By Andy Heath
I have applied to the Peace Corps, and it's a hard process. First you have to fill out an application, and that takes hours. They ask you all about your employment history, any illnesses you have had during your life, and there are essay questions about why you want to join the Peace Corps and what you feel you can contribute.
Then you have to fill out all kinds of other forms. You have to be fingerprinted, which involved a trip to the local police department. You have to speak to any debt that you currently have and how you will take care of it during your service. You have to send transcripts from college. And you have to get references from an employer, a volunteer supervisor, and a close friend – and these are not easy references. Your references must speak to your leadership skills, your ability to adapt to change, and many other things that they may not even know about you.
Then you have to go to an interview. I found out the other day – much to my surprise – that the Peace Corps does not reimburse travel expenses to the interview, so I told the recruiter that I would just have to wait until he came to Tennessee. Then he said I could do a phone interview. I think that is better because I don't have the money at this time to buy the gas to go to Atlanta, pay for a motel bill, and miss one or two days of work on top of that.
And after all that, they might even tell me that I'm not accepted into the program. And even if they do tell me I'm accepted, I may tell them I don't want to go overseas.
For those of you that aren't familiar with what the Peace Corps is, it's a program sponsored by the U.S. government that will allow you to go overseas to make a contribution to a foreign community for two years. They can send you to any corner of the globe, and it's a hard life. You could live in a mud hut in Africa or an apartment in downtown Beijing. A lot of times you don't know where they'll send you and you don't know what you'll end up doing. But I guess that is part of the adventure.
Maybe at this point in my life I'm getting past my adventurous state of mind. I think now I would just like to have a little money in my pocket and live a pleasant existence, but then, I just don't see that happening anytime in the near future.
So on the whole, my thoughts are that I will not go overseas at this point. I've had enough of heartbreak, loneliness, and boredom. I'm tired of living a hard life, and that would just make life even harder for me I think. In some ways, I'm not even entirely sure why I applied to begin with. I wish I had given it more thought before I did it, but then, as I said, I can always turn down the assignment.
