Katie Collins (BS10) shares her experience in the Peace Corps as an English teacher in Ukraine. Check out Katie’s first blog below and watch out for more Global GOLD posts.
Greetings EMU alumni!
Looking for a complete 180 in your life? Do you like volunteering? Have you ever wanted to learn a new language? Are you ready to move to a new country for over two years? Do you like being challenged? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to consider applying to the Peace Corps!
I took a very atypical route after graduation. I didn’t seek employment, didn’t think about making money and didn’t apply to grad school. Instead, I put all my eggs in one basket and applied to the Peace Corps. Turns out my gamble paid off. I’ve been serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine for over a year now. I work full-time as an English teacher at a K-12 school, I speak Russian (albeit poorly) and in my free time I play soccer with my students and farm potatoes with my Ukrainian friends.
I first heard about Peace Corps from my older sister. In high school I remember her telling everyone she was going to join one day and it sounded like a good idea to me! Two years of living in a different country – where could I sign up? Once I hit college my Peace Corps ambitions became more focused. After about a million times of changing my major (accounting, to biology, to international trade, to…) I finally found the perfect, and then brand new, International Affairs Program. What better way to utilize this degree than by gaining practical volunteer experience abroad? Excellent career move much?
I have to admit, my initial desires to serve were a bit superficial and focused exclusively on how much I could benefit from the experience. Two years of loan deferment and time to figure out my next move, the guarantee of learning a new language, the fact that it would look great on grad school applications. The list goes on. I had a complete paradigm shift, however, during the summer after my junior year, when I had the distinct pleasure of participating in EMU’s summer study abroad program in El Salvador. There, alongside some of EMU’s finest faculty members, we studied poverty, health and human rights up close and personal. After the program, I ventured on a bus to Guatemala and spent the rest of the summer studying Spanish and building stoves in rural villages. As soon as I got back to the States, I started my Peace Corps application. And this time, I wasn’t thinking about the money they would pay me after completion, and I wasn’t thinking about the non-competitive status I’d get with the government when I finished. Nope, now I just wanted to join and have the opportunity to help foster sustainable development in a foreign country. I wanted to see to what extent I could be an agent of change in a developing country and what I could learn from living as an isolated American in a foreign culture.
Peace Corps is more than just a job. Volunteers serve in countries all over the world under varying degrees of hardship and do a million and one diffe
rent jobs in their communities. We are on duty 24/7, we make the bare minimum to get by and half the time the expectations placed on us are totally unclear. That being said, I absolutely love what I’m doing here. It’s as much challenging and frustrating as it is rewarding and fulfilling and if I could go back I’d do it all again.
Stay tuned to hear more specifics about the application process, what three months of Peace Corps training really looks like and what I’m doing here in Ukraine as a volunteer. If you’re curious and want more information where volunteers serve and how to apply, check out the website here: https://www.peacecorps.gov/
I’ll leave you with a more realistic set of questions to see if you’re ready for the Peace Corps: Do you like eating weird foods? Do you like having lots of friends and socializing with people in English? If yes, could you give that up for two years? Do you want to feel like a celebrity yet have the conversational skills of a six year old? Do you like adventure? Think about it…
See you next week!
-Katie Collins
The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect any position or opinions of the United States Government or the Peace Corps.
For more on Katie, read her blog.
What are Global GOLD stories? Raw, adventurous, and timely. They are related to the ways our alumni (and students connected to the Alumni Association) make an impact related to global social, cultural, political and environmental causes and concerns. The views presented are representative of the author only and not the Office for Alumni Relations.
Go Katie, go!