I'd known about the Peace Corps for probably my whole life. It always this amazing thing that amazing and ambitious people participate in, but I'd never known anyone who'd actually done it. My dad always said that he would if he could, if he didn't have children and a mortgage and bills. But adults said things like to me all the time; that they'd wish they'd finished high school, or gone to college, or traveled abroad, but that they couldn't now because of all the responsibilities they'd piled on over the years. At some point, I realized that one day I'd be the one explaining away not doing the things I always wanted to do.
I always wanted to travel. I attribute this to Daniel Jackson from Stargate, the nerdy linguist/anthropologist with an unending well of cultural knowledge: anywhere the team ended up, Daniel could figure out what culture they originated from, and figure out how to use their language to translate for the team. He's the reason I took French classes in high school, the reason I wanted to know everything about Japanese culture when I started watching anime, the reason the only thing that's remained on my constantly changing bucket list is to learn five languages by the time I'm thirty.
I developed a passion for language and culture that blossomed when I spent a year in Tokyo studying Japanese. After that, I felt like I could see barriers between people, ideas, and dialects so much more clearly; in fact, my first week back from Japan, I was enraptured by my family's conversations, because each of my family members had a different American accent!
After I graduated, I knew I wanted to go abroad again. Everything was brighter, tenser, more important abroad. It was more difficult and more challenging, and that's what I wanted. I had a lot of options.
One early morning, around 2 am the fall before I graduated from college, I filled out an online application for the Peace Corps. It was still such a distant, terrifying idea. Being in Tokyo for 10 months was one thing -- I'd lived in a dorm with other English speakers, had all the amenities of the first world, running water, high speed internet, and wanted for nothing -- but the Peace Corps was such an unknown. It could mean sleeping in a hut with a mosquito net around me, pumping water from a well and boiling it before drinking it, and traveling for hours just to use a phone. My other options were stable: all teaching English in foreign countries and being paid a decent wage.
I deleted the application without sending it.
I decided to take a year off after graduating to spend time with my family; I'd only just returned from Japan the previous summer, and I felt some guilt at leaving so soon again. Unable to find a job other than the menial, minimum-wage labor I'd endured during high school, I spent May 2010 through January 2011 hating my 30-hour work week and lounging around with friends and family. It was an extremely unproductive time, but for the first time in my life, I just didn't have a track, no set goals to work toward.
I wanted to do something big. Going to Japan proved to me that it was possible, that I could accomplish something out in the world alone, and that I could leave my family for long periods of time and nothing would go wrong (a fear that plagued me my first months abroad).
I knew I eventually wanted to be a Foreign Service Officer. I took the extremely competitive test in October and scored 4 points below passing. My greatest weakness? Volunteer and leadership experience.
It just seemed so obvious then. Like it was what I was supposed to do. Applying for the Peace Corps would be exactly what I needed to get my life back on track. It was a 2-and-a-half year commitment that would change my life and toughen me up. It would provide major leadership experience, something that would benefit me in any career I could think of.
I decided to apply in January of 2011.
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