After hours of brainstorming, writing, and a bit of obsessive editing, I've FINALLY sent the Morocco Peace Corps staff my Peace Corps Resume and Aspiration Statement. These documents are our formal introduction to the Morocco country staff, and the only real introduction they'll get before we arrive. It will be used in part to focus our training and to identify the areas in which we are strong, weak, interested, etc.
You might be thinking, "Wait...didn't you already fill out an enormous application, submit your resume, write two essays, fill out countless forms about your experience, and go through multiple interviews to get to this point? Doesn't the Peace Corps already have a ton of information about you?"
The answer to these questions is yes, and believe me when I say I was initially just as confused by the additional request for information as you might be. With a little more reading and a lot more context, however, it started to make sense. The staff at the US Peace Corps offices (recruiters, placement officers, etc) does have all of this information about incoming volunteers, but the Morocco country staff has no idea who we are at this point. The US staff needs to send the Morocco staff some comprehensive information about who we are, what we know, what we'd like to do, and all the rest before arrive in March for a 27-month commitment. They could just send them the information they already have, but for one thing, it's pretty out of date. Most of us wrote those application essays and resumes over a year and a half ago, and a lot can (and did) happen between then and now. Plus, we all likely took different spins on the broad essay prompts and included different things in our resumes, making the would-be information packets pretty inconsistent and less useful than they could be.
Thus, here I am after submitting a totally reformatted resume and newly-written Aspiration Statement. The resume wasn't a big thing; just streamlining the format and adding some additional information that they wanted to be included. Though, I must say, it was interesting and awesome seeing how many courses I was able to list under the section containing training and relevant coursework. Thank you, Women & Gender Studies and Political Science! :) With all of the added material, my resume ended up being pretty long - like 4 pages long. In an ordinary situation this would be super problematic, but I figure that its a little bit different here: This is one of only TWO pieces of information the entire Morocco staff will receive about us before we begin working with them for over two YEARS. Probably best to err on the side of thorough, especially since its being used to analyze our strengths, areas of focus, and everything else.
Then there's the Aspiration Statement: quite possibly one of the more difficult and self-reflective documents you'll have to write in a long while. There are five sections that they ask you to include:
A. The professional attributes that I plan to use, and what aspirations I hope to fulfill, during my
Peace Corps service.
B. My strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
C. My strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to my own cultural background.
D. The skills and knowledge I hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve my future
community and project.
E. How I think Peace Corps service will influence my personal and professional aspirations after my service ends.
In a nutshell, they're asking us to sum up all of our rationale, thoughts, hopes, goals, strategies, etc. about the Peace Corps in one document. Not to mention our life goals for AFTER service. Its a pretty daunting idea, really. There is so much to say that it almost begs the question, "Where do I start??" It was nice to be able to divide it up into headings, though; that definitely made it seem more manageable.
In a nutshell, they're asking us to sum up all of our rationale, thoughts, hopes, goals, strategies, etc. about the Peace Corps in one document. Not to mention our life goals for AFTER service. Its a pretty daunting idea, really. There is so much to say that it almost begs the question, "Where do I start??" It was nice to be able to divide it up into headings, though; that definitely made it seem more manageable.
After literally months of brainstorming, I finally set out to start and finish the thing last week. (Normally, the Peace Corps wants them within 10 days of accepting your assignment, but there was a little more leeway in our group's case, since there's so much time between invitation and departure.) So there I was again, trying to take a million complex thoughts and actually put them on paper. Even though I'm very confident about my skills as a writer, a part of me always wishes I could just talk with someone rather than going through the process of typing it out in a nice format. Deep down though, I honestly see the benefit of actually thinking it out, organizing it, and putting it on paper. When you write, you're forced to write something more than simply every single thing that pops into your head at random. You have to analyze what you're writing, why you're including it, and what it means. You have to dig deeper, think about what's truly important, and how it all fits together.
We don't begin to write after we understand; we understand after we begin to write.
This may seem a little abstract, but my point is that even after the stress and worry about writing a thorough Aspiration Statement, I'm so glad for the opportunity to have written it. It was moderate in length, about 4 pages (how could you not write several pages with those kind of prompts??) For the section about adapting to a new culture, I wrote a lot about the feminist principle of reflexivity, as discussed in numerous WGS classes along the way at Grand Valley. It was wonderful to re-examine the concept and apply it to what I'll be doing in Morocco. I feel as though I have a clearer vision for what I hope to accomplish, and a better grasp on the strategies I can use to go about it. Of course there will be bumps, twists, and crazy turns in the road, but going in with a basic idea is far better than nothing at all.
