I recently did the unthinkable.
I turned down a job offer to work on Wall Street after graduation.
In an act even more appalling and unimaginable, I chose to become a Peace Corps volunteer.
That's right -- I turned down a paycheck offering lots of zeroes for one that is much closer to zero.
Pending medical and legal clearance, come June, I will be off to an underdeveloped part of the world to spend the next two years working on grassroots development projects.
After hearing that, everyone instinctively asks, "Are you crazy?"
Perhaps just a little.
The question that invariably follows is, "Why would you do something like that?"
Well, read on.
I know that it was a bad decision for my checkbook. But after much introspection, I realized that the Peace Corps offers me an opportunity unmatched by any analyst program.
The main reason behind my decision is the importance of being globally conscious. Many of us are too myopic in believing that the world revolves around the four Metroliner cities. God forbid we have to settle down after college in any of the "fly-over" states.
Sure, we've gone abroad to tourist destinations like Cancun and Tokyo. Some might have even studied abroad in London or Paris. But anyone who believes that such places are indicative of the real world is sadly mistaken.
In an ever-globalizing world, it would be foolish not to have a global perspective. History has proven that U.S. isolationism doesn't work and will never work for a variety of reasons -- the crudest of which is the allure of the two and a half billion people residing in India and China as potential mouths for McDonald's and Coca-Cola.
First, our failure to view the rest of the world's population as people has put the U.S. in the current bind of having much of the world hate us. We fail to understand the poverty that affects the majority of the world's population and its effects (terrorism, for one). We send checks as our part in the development effort but are reluctant to provide the resource most needed -- manpower.
Second, the Peace Corps appeals to my sense of volunteerism. Too many people view volunteerism as a means to a self-oriented end rather than comprehending that service should be an end in itself.
In high school, many of us, myself included, volunteered in hospitals and nursing homes to "make my college application look better." And now at Penn, some tutor in West Philadelphia and volunteer at soup kitchens to "make their resumes look better."
For once in my life, I want to get away from the idea of community service as a stepping stone. I want to devote significant time and effort without any thought to future monetary payoff.
Finally, the Peace Corps appeals to my desire for adventure and uncertainty. Much of our lives follow a straight pattern: to get into that college, so I can get that summer internship, so I can get that job, so I can get into that top graduate school, so I can become rich. Not to quote the overused Robert Frost poem, but the linear path frankly seems rather dull.
I am being nominated for business advising in Latin America, but in June, I might very well find myself teaching in Mongolia. Wherever I go, I will likely be living in a village where I am the only American. Landing in an unfamiliar place and being told to live there for two years without any predetermined work projects is adventure personified.
I am not such a dreamer that I believe I will single-handedly end global poverty or improve a country's standard of living. But I am willing to do my part.
I was attracted to Wall Street for all the wrong reasons, and at this point in my life, I shudder at the thought of being a peon (albeit well-paid) in the corporate clog. My next two years will be better spent in the Peace Corps than in any analyst program.
I know that life abroad will not be easy and that there will be times of frustration. I will probably have second thoughts daily about giving up the comforts and familiarity of New York for a part of the world without the amenities of home.
But at the end of my service, if I have made some small, measurable difference in people's lives, it will have been worth it. It will have been the toughest job that I'll ever love.
Richard Mo is a senior History and Economics major from Fresh Meadows, NY.
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