Peace Corps Dopers - guide me!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’d very much like to enter the Peace Corps after college. I think it would be highly educational, the experience would make me a far better policymaker than I would otherwise be (I hope some day to be elected to public office, or perhaps serve in the State Department), and I firmly believe that I could do a lot of good in the 'Corps. What I would like to know from the wonderful, intelligent, and - above all else - “willing-to-spend-five-dollars” Dopers who have experience in the Peace Corps what I should do between now and graduation to maximize my chances of getting in.

I’m a sophomore political science major/economics minor with a 3.5 GPA at a small liberal arts university. My biggest bit of volunteer work has probably been my preparation of briefing papers for a conference at my school, “New Land For Peace”, on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I’ve also done some limited volunteer work with a local “get out the youth vote” group, CHASE The Vote, and more extensive work with their public-access TV news program. Beyond this, I haven’t done any sustained volunteer work - though I am involved in other activities on campus, including the radio station, a runnig political battle with our College Republicans, Model UN, and so on. I have no foreign language skills.

It should also be noted that I am not in good physical shape - I’m not morbidly obese, but I have a bit of the “sophomore sixteen”, and I’ve never been particularly strong.

My first question, then, is: what, if anything, do I need to do to make myself more attractive to the Peace Corps? Do I look like a viable candidate right now? If not, why, and what can I do to fix it? I imagine the language issue is the thing that jumps out as the most glaring fault - the Peace Corps webpage does say there are slots for people who don’t know a foreign language, but is that just PR-speak?

Obviously, I won’t be trying for positions that focus on physical labor - but I imagine pretty much anywhere I’d go, I’d be expected to engage in a less sedentary lifestyle than I do now. How much would my current…er…laid-back state of fitness matter in the recruitment process?

Regarding scheduling: I’m going home now for summer vacation - when should I contact a recruiter to get the process started? Now? In the fall? Not until my senior year?

Finally - where have other Dopers been placed? When were you there? What was it like? Would you recommend that placement to a poor sucker like me? :slight_smile:

As always, any advice the Teeming Millions could offer would be very much appreciated.

Wait - those questions were sort of a list, weren’t they? I forgot something:

Hi, Opal!

2

Why not just test for the State Department now, if that’s your goal? The exam is rigorous and it would be best for you to take it while the information is fresh in your head. Do your time on the visa line and then make your bid for a pol or econ position.

The Peace Corps has a very high attrition rate. Fully 25-30% just give up and go home before ever getting to their assigned village. It can be a hard life of living on the ground and eating whatever local food you can get, drinking whatever water is available. It will be hard on someone who is in poor shape.

I don’t know if you are a good candidate. Without language skills, you’re probably not the best candidate. I would say you are a naive candidate and it’s good that you are soliciting advice. I have not been in the Corps, but I was a State Department employee and met and knew a lot of Peace Corps volunteers. The ones who survive it are a dedicated bunch, and can always point to having toughed it out as an accomplishment.

3

Thanks for the advice, you make a lot of good points. The main reason I’d like to do the Peace Corps before trying for a State Department job is that I’d like some actual oversees experience under my belt beforehand, so that I’m not just running off stuff I’ve learned in the classroom. Do you have any ideas on how I could do this?

4

Former Peace Corps Volunteer checking in.

Generally state department types don’t start in the Peace Corps. You deal with completely different people. In the Peace Corps you deal with locals, the people with a small “p” while in the state department you deal with important People with a capital “P” (generally, I much prefer the small “p” types).

That being said, I have known some former RPCVs who did go into the foreign service mostly AID related positions. And interesting to note, they said they found some prejudice against former vols by the academic prep-school types and those they said are the guys with the “futures.”

I have known quite a few more who went to work for private corporations, charities, and organizations in the third world.

A number more go to work for the host governments.

Now with all that out of the way, let’s get back to the OP. What can you do to become more attractive to the Peace Corps. The largest number of volunteers are still in education. So if you take a few education classes it won’t hurt. Of course, they will take the certified teachers first, but after they are gone the ones who took ed courses will look pretty good.

A language helps. Granted many of the countries have their own languages, but Spanish, Portagese or French can be a definite plus.

Skills help. The Peace Corps is always looking for carpenters, dry wallers, masons, electiricians, air conditioning repairmen, etc. If you took a job over the summer just helping at a construction site, it will help your chances.

Ag background helps. If you have any chance to work on ranch or farm, it will help.

All that being said, if you do get in expect to be frustrated. What Chefguy was true. There is an incredibly high rate of attrition. The work is hard, the support is poor, the living conditions are at times quite questionable, the thanks is often nonexistent and this is almost a guarentee, what you were assigned to do, does not exist. The vols who survive and succeed are the ones who can adapt and do the old lemonade out of lemons thing.

I was assigned to be a teacher trainer on an island in the Pacific, when I got to the island, the school had fallen down two years before and the teachers I was supposed to train had gone on to other islands. I had to make a decision immediately, the ship was getting ready to leave and another wouldn’t be back for three months. I stayed. The villagers and I built a new school, I pretty much drafted some village elders as new teachers and taught five classes myself. In addition, I built a water catchment system for the island that came in handy when a drought hit a couple of years later. I also set up an infirmary that may have saved a few limbs.

All the time I was there, however, the people in charge, back at the capital thought I was “teacher training”.

I truly loved my time in the Peace Corps (after I finished my tour in Micronesia, I served in Nepal - in both I learned so much more than I taught), but it isn’t for everyone. And it changes you. Don’t expect to have the same interests and desires you had when you went in. I was a big city guy when I went in. I had the a desire to get ahead and succeed, with all that entails.

Now I live in a community of less than 4,000 people off the beaten paths of major commercialism and am quite content to be part of that community with all the responsibilities that interacting so intimately with so many people necessitates. My time in Peace Corps did that to me, and I have no complaints about it at all.

TV

5

Why don’t you look into studying abroad in your junior year? I did that and it was the best decision I have ever made, ever ever ever. And it’s never hurt having it on my resume. I think it helps that I did my year in Jerusalem, a place a lot of people are simulateously fascinated and frightened by. I get a lot of strange looks, comments, and questions when I tell people what I did for my third year of college.

6

Oh, and I applied for the Peace Corps a few months out of college. Other than and BA in anthropology, having lived out of the country for a year and the ability to muddle my way around in Spanish and Hebrew, I had nothing particularly useful to offer. But I was accepted anyway, to teach English in Africa. Unfortunately, this was about a month before the September 11 attacks and my parents absolutely freaked about me leaving for a third world country. Now I’m planning on applying again. I’m tired of futzing around doing a bullshit job I don’t care about when I’d rather be working in international development and aid. I think the Peace Corps will be the best first step in that direction. I sort of wish I had gone back then, but I am more mature and have more to offer now than I did then. When I’m 50, the few extra years it took for me to get around to do what I wanted won’t seem that much.

7

You don’t need any overseas experience to work for the State Department. In fact, you don’t even need any life experience. If you can follow procedures, kiss ass and do what you’re told, you’ll be just fine. Long-time State Department employees are so out of touch with reality, it’s scary.

When you’re posted overseas with the DOS, you will generally be living in a miniature American town. Most posts have the better housing in the area (with many notable exceptions), and the Americans tend to hang out together, particularly in the hardship postings. There is generally an American Club, a commissary, and parties on the weekends.

As TV Time said, the two are not even remotely the same, other than that both are government organizations, and the embassy in the host country may offer some support for the Peace Corps, but it’s generally restricted to passport issues. I’ve seen some of those folks come in out of the boonies in Africa looking like concentration camp victims. The dysentary and parasites take a big toll.

8

Wow.

How on earth did you even know how to do that? Even assuming, that I stayed (big assumption) and figured out “This place could use an infirmary and a water catchment system” (bigger assumption) I would have no clue as to how to make those things reality - did you have construction skills before? Did you just come up with this? Where does this knowledge come from? Is it common sense that I’m just lacking?

9

Get ahold of them and ask what would make you a better candidate:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/

Thay may have a recruiter at your college, or near the town where you live.

Also, there are organizations for returned peace corps volunteers, you may be able to contact someone near your home through such an organization and get more information that way.

One thing that I have noticed about my peace corps friends is that they LOVE talking about peace corps. Find someone and get them talking, you’ll get plenty of information and probably more contacts. And so on.

10

Basically a combination at least initially of real low-tech and trial-and-error. Sheets of corregated tin left over from the school roof, mounted on eight-foot and eight-foot six inch high polls draining into wooden gutters made by the islanders which in turn drained into two water tanks made from fuel tanks from WWII airplanes that we dragged from the island’s lagoon (combination of Rube Goldberg and Macgiver, I guess - but it worked). We originally used a coconut husk plug, but an islander designed a very brilliant wooden spiggot. Oh yeah, we also used both mosquito netting and screens as filtration devices.

As for the infirmary, I sent for plans from U.S.AID and they sent not only plans but the necessary building materials and stuff to stock it with. When we finished building it, it was far from a work of art, but it was better than what was there before.

I did not have any special construction skills. I had helped my father pour a concrete patio when I was a boy, worked with hammer and nails in finishing friends’ and family’s garages and basements.

Yeah, pretty much common sense and the thought, “I wonder if?” constantly in your mind. I believe pretty much anybody can do it if they are in a situation where it’s necessary. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” as someone (probably Franklin) once said.

And…Herownself was correct. Not many people around are really interested in what we did, so when someone asks for information we will talk forever on the the subject.

TV

11

True story, one time when I was coming in from my assignment in Nepal (had to trek in, no roads from my village) I looked so bad one of the begger kids in Katmandu (a really tough group of kids) offered me money.

As for dysentary and parasites - They are pretty much the Peace Corps mascots. It used to be, if you served, you got them. I don’t believe it is quite so prevalant in Eastern Europe now that Peace Corps is there. Weightwise, I am comfortable at around 190 pounds. While I was in Peace Corps, I was down one time to 112 pounds. Usually I was under 120.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved it. I think it is the most important thing I have ever done. But it was challenging at times.

TV