At 1:54pm on a Tuesday, approximately one decade since my first application, I finally received the invitation I had dreamed about since my early adolescent years. Although my timeline was relatively one of short duration, the wait to know where my future was headed felt unbearable at times. I remember spending the two days prior to my invitation preoccupied with refreshing my email a dozen or two times each hour.
“Congratulations! You have been selected to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer”
I was beaming. It was the happiest, yet most terrified I have ever felt. I would be untruthful if I had neglected to mention the latter part of that last sentence. Despite the paralyzing fear that I was completely 180’ing my life for the next 27 months, the prospect of a life-changing adventure far outweighed the feelings of, “oh my god, what have I done?”.
27 months. 117.322 weeks. 821.251 days. 19710 hours, give or take. For the next two years and 3 months I will be completely culturally immersed in a country I had just recently learned of within the past few years. A beautiful country full of kind and welcoming people, majestic pagodas, fragrant and spicy noodle, rice and curry dishes, Thanaka-donned smiling faces, and sweltering 100+ degree days during the hot season. A magnificent country called Myanmar, lovingly nicknamed “the golden land”.
I have been invited to serve as a Secondary Education English Teacher, a profession I had always secretly wished I would have pursued. Despite the fact that my current career and academic pursuits are focused in the field of social work, I knew the skills I had learned in both my undergraduate and graduate studies would greatly assist me in this new journey. Core values of my profession: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence, all align with the values of the Peace Corps mission. As social work practitioners, we work to empower the client system to identify and utilize their own unique strengths in order to address their own needs. Enhancing self-awareness, increasing self-confidence, and achieving self-sufficiency. None of this is much different from the goals of Peace Corps service. Each volunteer within their given sector is tasked with a particular set of assignments; however, the ultimate goal is for the volunteer to cultivate meaningful relationships and to promote problem-solving and stability through education and skills training.
I know that this new adventure will be scary, hard, and probably a little weird. But challenge is just an opportunity for personal growth. I for one, cannot wait.
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