Photos, stories, and experiences of a Peace Corps Natural Resources Conservation Volunteer in Ecuador.

"There is no way to peace, peace is the way."

Planaholic

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? Well, my name is Sarah and I am a planaholic. My future is laid out for me all the way up until April 4, 2014. Plus, I’d like to backpack and travel for a month after Peace Corps so I guess I’m really all set until sometime in May 2014. You’d think that would be more than enough of my life planned out for me to handle at the age of 22 (2 years = one eleventh of my young life). You would think that, but you’d be wrong.

I am a planner to a fault. I know it’s something I’ll have to struggle with during my service and, ideally, my planaholic tendencies will be beaten out of me by the time I’m done. But until then, I must admit, I even kinda, maybe, sorta planned this blog post in my head last night before I fell asleep, and long before I was even invited to be a PCV, I was coming up with post-service options in my head. Since then, these options have transformed into a full-fledged ink-on-paper list. Potential plans include (but are not limited to):

  1. Graduate school (as a typical planaholic, I have already taken the GRE and yes, I already have a couple schools in mind)
  2. Foreign Service Officer (have already taken this test once already too but failed by 12 points. sad face.)
  3. Working for Peace Corps, maybe as a recruiter? maybe abroad?
  4. Translator
  5. Stop living in a fantasy world and actually get a job like a grown-up. Potential employers: Human Rights Watch, Carter Center, Amnesty International, The Elders, Humane Society, United Nations, etc.
  6. OR taking PC up on that year of non-competitive eligibility and trying to get a job with the Department of State
  7. Think Tank? (how do you even get involved with a think tank? Obviously more planning/research needs to be done… I’ve been slacking.)

Anddddd, if this planning obsession wasn’t bad enough already, I also bought a book titled Working World: Careers in International Education, Exchange and Development to further expand upon my list.

Anyway, all of these potential plans sound equally appealing to me, but more recently I can’t seem to shake the idea of spending a third year abroad as part of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program. I’ve already promised myself that I will not let my planning neurosis take over, and will let my 2 years as a PCV guide me as far as what I want to do with my future, but this Fulbright idea is taking over my brain. It’s quite possible that I’ll be dying to get back to the States by 2014, that the idea of spending another year abroad and alone in a foreign country will sound like torture but somehow, I doubt it. Anyone out there have any experience with the Fulbright ETA program? Is it something worth looking into further?

  1. sarahreichle posted this