Saturday, October 09, 2004
Up Next?
As I prepare to leave Malaysia, I distract myself with What Is To Follow.
Maybe the Peace Corps. I first learned about the PC in high school, when I was at a short academic summer program in Wisconsin for some thing or other, and was super excited about it. As I got older, I worried about the cultural imperialism of it all and the "white person comes to save the village" attitude--when in reality that volunteer has no real experience or skills and the village has gotten on by itself for decades or even centuries.
I spent much of yesterday surfing the internet and found a BlogRing for Peace Corps volunteers. (Which made me think maybe I should try to start one for Fulbright?!)
American Idle links to an article by Marissa Mika, who must be somewhere in Africa by now. She writes, "When I think about the alternative, which is finding a job that pays the bills while I try to figure out what graduate programs to apply to, it seems like a holding pattern similar to a "stupefy" curse from Harry Potter. I could be frozen for a time and then wake up to find myself in exactly the same place. Put in that light, the decision is obvious."
I have so many friends who had problems finding jobs upon graduation and see my sister and her friends going through the same thing now. Marissa quotes an unidentified reader: "Graduating now is so much harder than it was just three years ago. You do not have the armies of recruiters and flood of career fairs we did in 2000. Confusion reigns. Assistance is scarce. What are young people to do when they graduate? With so few options out there, why can't we be more supportive of our grads?"
Before the Peace Corps idea took hold last week, I'd been thinking of grad school (MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies at SOAS in the UK; MA in Human Rights from the London School of Economics; MA in International Human Rights from the University for Peace in Costa Rica), but...they're kind of expensive and I'm still not sure what I want to do, so don't know what I need to do/study yet!
Law school has sort of faded from the screen, though if I were to go that route, I think the only school for me would be Northeastern in Boston, which has a unique 2nd and 3rd year cooperative program; you spend 3 months taking classes, then 3 months doing an internship (which can be abroad!). And more people there end up in public interest and there are no grades, so none of that evil-student-sabotages-classmates-to-get-a-better-grade crap.
Post-Christmas I want to be abroad and doing 'good' work. The problem is getting a paid job to do that without a degree or another year or two of work experience. The solution could be Peace Corps!
I don't know if I mentioned other (unpaid) Africa options I've lined up. I'd fund them with the money I saved this year from Fulbright, but...would rather have an internship/job that at least covered expenses---very hard to come by!
2. Assist with the development of a manual on legal literacy training in Ghana
3. Assist with the planning and design of workshops that touch on elections, legal literacy, HIV/AIDS and violence against women. Basically I will expect a lot of input from you regarding contents for these workshops based on proposals that have been developed by me.
4. You will be required to visit our focal offices outside of the capital city Accra, which are found to the Eastern and Western parts of Accra to get on the hands experience with the legal literacy work that they carry out in communities. Our Western Region office will be working with refugee women so your experience will be helpful.
5. Wildaf is also involved with advocacy at the international level, i.e. working around the Protocol on the rights of women to the African Charter, CEDAW etc
I also worry that I'd get stuck in an assignment where I didn't actually do anything. This Fulbright year has been quite...undemanding and a bit slow work-wise. Sometimes I feel frustrated that I'm not doing something more helpful to society. In Egypt, at the Refugee Legal Aid Project, I was happy to be working 60 hour weeks because I knew I was helping. Going somewhere and sitting on my hands is not what I'm looking for. But I suppose I would be more inclined now to take the initiative to change my situation if that happened.
After applying and being accepted, you're offered a position in a certain country for a certain assignment and then you can either accept or reject. I'm not sure what happens if you reject it (eg if they give you another or you're out of luck for being picky). You can list preferences for geographical location: my country choices would be Peru, Chile, Costa Rica, Morrocco, or Tanzania, I think. I refuse to teach English--no patience and if I was going to do that, I might as well be doing it in Korea or Japan where you can make good money doing it! Plus, I want an assignment that will help me figure out my future and gain skills (like learning Spanish!).
Other qoutes that got me thinking:
From a Jane magazine article that I just lost the link for:
As I prepare to leave Malaysia, I distract myself with What Is To Follow.
Maybe the Peace Corps. I first learned about the PC in high school, when I was at a short academic summer program in Wisconsin for some thing or other, and was super excited about it. As I got older, I worried about the cultural imperialism of it all and the "white person comes to save the village" attitude--when in reality that volunteer has no real experience or skills and the village has gotten on by itself for decades or even centuries.
I spent much of yesterday surfing the internet and found a BlogRing for Peace Corps volunteers. (Which made me think maybe I should try to start one for Fulbright?!)
American Idle links to an article by Marissa Mika, who must be somewhere in Africa by now. She writes, "When I think about the alternative, which is finding a job that pays the bills while I try to figure out what graduate programs to apply to, it seems like a holding pattern similar to a "stupefy" curse from Harry Potter. I could be frozen for a time and then wake up to find myself in exactly the same place. Put in that light, the decision is obvious."
I have so many friends who had problems finding jobs upon graduation and see my sister and her friends going through the same thing now. Marissa quotes an unidentified reader: "Graduating now is so much harder than it was just three years ago. You do not have the armies of recruiters and flood of career fairs we did in 2000. Confusion reigns. Assistance is scarce. What are young people to do when they graduate? With so few options out there, why can't we be more supportive of our grads?"
Before the Peace Corps idea took hold last week, I'd been thinking of grad school (MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies at SOAS in the UK; MA in Human Rights from the London School of Economics; MA in International Human Rights from the University for Peace in Costa Rica), but...they're kind of expensive and I'm still not sure what I want to do, so don't know what I need to do/study yet!
Law school has sort of faded from the screen, though if I were to go that route, I think the only school for me would be Northeastern in Boston, which has a unique 2nd and 3rd year cooperative program; you spend 3 months taking classes, then 3 months doing an internship (which can be abroad!). And more people there end up in public interest and there are no grades, so none of that evil-student-sabotages-classmates-to-get-a-better-grade crap.
Post-Christmas I want to be abroad and doing 'good' work. The problem is getting a paid job to do that without a degree or another year or two of work experience. The solution could be Peace Corps!
I don't know if I mentioned other (unpaid) Africa options I've lined up. I'd fund them with the money I saved this year from Fulbright, but...would rather have an internship/job that at least covered expenses---very hard to come by!
- Interning in Ghana with WILDAF (Women in Law and Development in Africa). The director said I could contribute in the following ways:
2. Assist with the development of a manual on legal literacy training in Ghana
3. Assist with the planning and design of workshops that touch on elections, legal literacy, HIV/AIDS and violence against women. Basically I will expect a lot of input from you regarding contents for these workshops based on proposals that have been developed by me.
4. You will be required to visit our focal offices outside of the capital city Accra, which are found to the Eastern and Western parts of Accra to get on the hands experience with the legal literacy work that they carry out in communities. Our Western Region office will be working with refugee women so your experience will be helpful.
5. Wildaf is also involved with advocacy at the international level, i.e. working around the Protocol on the rights of women to the African Charter, CEDAW etc
- Interning with the Indigenous Information Network in Kenya. I'd be able to stay with Lucy, the woman mentioned in this article, for a month or so. Then she told me I could go out into the bush and live with the nomadic Maasai warriors! She seems to know that I don't have any real skills to offer, but thinks it's important that I be exposed to the human rights, land use, etc issues.
Okay, back to the Peace Corps. If this post goes back and forth a lot, it's because that's what my brain has been doing!
One drawback is that the Peace Corps is a 2 year committment, in addition to 3 months of training. That always seemed like a long time to me, but looking back over the last year, it does seem to have gone by rather quickly. As has the two years since graduation. And, I read that nearly 1/3 of 6,500+ volunteers drop out...not that I'm planning to drop out, but doesn't seem to be completely impossible should something (better) come up or it not feel right once I'm in it.I also worry that I'd get stuck in an assignment where I didn't actually do anything. This Fulbright year has been quite...undemanding and a bit slow work-wise. Sometimes I feel frustrated that I'm not doing something more helpful to society. In Egypt, at the Refugee Legal Aid Project, I was happy to be working 60 hour weeks because I knew I was helping. Going somewhere and sitting on my hands is not what I'm looking for. But I suppose I would be more inclined now to take the initiative to change my situation if that happened.
After applying and being accepted, you're offered a position in a certain country for a certain assignment and then you can either accept or reject. I'm not sure what happens if you reject it (eg if they give you another or you're out of luck for being picky). You can list preferences for geographical location: my country choices would be Peru, Chile, Costa Rica, Morrocco, or Tanzania, I think. I refuse to teach English--no patience and if I was going to do that, I might as well be doing it in Korea or Japan where you can make good money doing it! Plus, I want an assignment that will help me figure out my future and gain skills (like learning Spanish!).
Other qoutes that got me thinking:
From a Jane magazine article that I just lost the link for:
- "At the top of Heather's problem/solution board is: 'Not sure if I joined because I wanted to, or just to prove how good I actually am to peeps...I get bored, restless, and unmotivated." Part of my internal push to get a Masters is so that I can 'make something of myself' and there seems to be some sort of time constraint built into my head, no doubt planted by subliminal societal pressures. As a Yalie, I have the over-achiever can't-settle-for-second-best attitude that makes me wince at the idea of not going to a top 20 school---damn LSAT score--even if the lower ranked Northeastern more closely fits my long-term career interests!
- "Development money could be spent in better ways than sending out more inexperienced kids with few skills to offer," says Suerire who has a history degree from Yale. "I totally put myself in that group. I was supposed to train teachers in South Africa to teach the new post-apartheid curriculum. I was in a group of 39, and about 30 of us had no full-time teaching experience. The whole proposition was ludicrous. The Peace Corps could have thought a little harder about what's the best way of using volunteers and their skills and backgrounds."
- "Lots of returned PCVs had intensely worthwhile experiences--many say they got more than they gave. 'There's not a whole lot you offer, except your youthful enthusiams and Americanism,' says Suerie."
"I still do not understand who was running the show, or what they did, or even what the Peace Corps actually was, apart from an enlightened excuse for sending us to poor countries. Those countries are still poor. We were the ones who were enriched, and sometimes I think that we remind those people--as if they needed such a thing--that they were being left out. We stayed a while, and then we left them. And yet I think I would do it again. At an uncertain time in my life I joined. And up to a point--they gave me a lot of rope--the Peace Corps allowed me to be myself. I realized that it was much better to be neglected than manipulated, and I had learned that you make your own life." Paul Theroux, When the Peace Corps was Young
From Travels in Bananaland, a Peace Corps volunteer in St. Lucia wrote:
- came to have a new understanding of 'work,' 'success' and 'achievement' in my life. came to terms with the overachiever mentality that causes me undo stress. attempted to battle those demons. see above!
- Changed assignments several times--once officially, and again unofficially. Found my own projects and community partners, and finally got some things done once i worked with people who wanted me there and respected my skills and my time.
- Boredom so profound that I resort to being excited about a 1-day a week job where I staple, address envelopes and do data entry because they have air conditioning, dsl and are nice to me (for this I went US$15,000 into debt in grad school?) At least I'd be doing it BEFORE I was in grad school debt...
I guess it doesn't hurt any to apply...see what happens...
Anyone else other there have thoughts/questions/experiences to lead me to a decision?! Or better yet--offer me a job?!!?
