Why did you join the Peace Corps?

I've always enjoyed learning, but knowledge is only tempered and improved by real life experiences. I started a Peace Corps application when I completed my Bachelors degree. I never got beyond the first few pages of it - at the time, I was skeptical. But looking back, it just wasn't the right time. I stayed close to home, but was lucky to find a job as a teacher at a private school. I ended up working there for almost five years. While teaching, I completed a certificate course in education, and tackling the big questions about learning - What's the best way to learn? How can learning feed creativity and democracy? - inspired me to go back to school, and get a Masters degree in education. One of my favorite professors was Kenyan, and she inspired me to finally complete the Peace Corps application. She was skeptical of many foreign interventions in her home country, but had great admiration for Peace Corps volunteers: if not specifically their work, then their effort to live locally with the most basic of resources. I'm glad I waited. Having an advanced degree allowed me to choose the continent where I worked, and I enjoyed every day of living and working in central Zambia. Having transitioned from learning to practice, and practice to learning, I'm returning to University this year, in order to pursue research in education, and hopefully return to the same region in Africa, effectively turning my Peace Corps service into an introduction, a trailer perhaps, for the feature film of the rest of my life.

I was in my senior year at college and had no idea what I wanted to do once I graduated. I figured I would end up getting a job somewhere working out of a cubicle and that would be life. It just didn't feel right though. One of my professors offhandedly mentioned the Peace Corp and a spark lit off in my head. As soon as I got back to my room, I looked up the Peace Corp website and read all about it. I'd never been out of the country before or done much of anything. It sounded like an amazing experience. I started filling out the application immediately and a few months after graduation I was headed abroad. It was a life changing experience that is always with me. I still keep in touch with many of the people I met and was able to return for a visit a few years ago. tldr: I joined Peace Corps on a whim.

My answer is similar to Orin's. I had my BA and needed to take another step in order to find my career path. I had zero professional connections, and even though I was a good candidate for academia, I was not ready at the time. A friend called and asked whether I would serve as a reference for his application to Peace Corps, and I was reminded that I'd thought about volunteering since I was four years old (not kidding--they had great PSAs in the 70s). I had a few foreign languages and assumed that I would end up in a Spanish-speaking country, teaching English. I was totally wrong. I ended up in Morocco as an agriculture volunteer (it all makes sense now, almost 20 years on). I joined out of curiosity about the world, truly. I stuck it out because I truly fell in love with members of my community. I mean, in the most literal sense, as I ended up marrying a local, but I also developed strong attachments to a few families in my host community. I still see them when we go to visit the in-laws, and my children have met them and love them, too. I had limited success in my first-goal efforts, but I would say I continue to serve goals 2 and 3.