Toreros in the Peace Corps

Alumni and current students of USD discuss their experiences with the Peace Corps

Celina Tebor | Feature Editor | USD Vista

As students enter their junior and senior years of college, thoughts regarding post-college intensify. The fear of unemployment, lack of self-fulfillment, and the idea of self-dependency are thoughts that pass through the minds of college students. Some Toreros jump right into the job market, others continue onto a graduate school, or some join the military. Another option some pursue is joining the Peace Corps, a volunteer program run by the United States government to help developing nations worldwide.

The Peace Corps announced that USD ranked No. 16 among medium-sized schools (enrollment between 5,000 – 15,000 undergraduates) in the agency’s 2018 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list. This is the third consecutive year USD has ranked on this list and in total, 224 USD alumni have traveled abroad to serve as volunteers in the Peace Corps.

There are currently 18 Toreros serving worldwide throughout the Peace Corps. Madelene Baker, class of  2016, earned a degree in international business, and currently serves in Morocco. She has been there since September 2017.

At first, Baker was hesitant about joining the Peace Corps after graduation.

“I have been considering the Peace Corps since I was probably in middle school,” Baker said. “But in college after seeing all of my friends with business degrees going into such lucrative jobs and thinking about how much debt I have, noting that the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has not yet proven to be reliable, I thought, ‘Is it really responsible for me to be volunteering for the next two years of my life?’”

Baker decided to commit to one year with AmeriCorps, an umbrella organization that provides funding to other service organizations. At City Year New York, she worked in inner-city public schools to help students with mathematics and

develop curriculum with teachers. However, she realized that if there were ever a time to do Peace Corps, it was at that point. She explained why she was so attracted to the idea of the Peace Corps.

“I’ve been drawn to the idea of international service and global citizenship my whole life,” Baker said. “And Peace Corps is not just a way to give to others, but to learn about other cultures first-hand and to teach about my own (culture) in a way that often contradicts what people think from consuming media and watching movies.”

After deciding that the Peace Corps was the right decision for her, Baker was still nervous about spending two years of her life abroad. The thoughts of learning a different language and being tossed into a brand new culture worried her. Baker ultimately took her leap of faith and applied in December 2016.

“At the time I applied I was still nervous about whether or not it was the right decision, but as I anxiously awaited my acceptance and started to think I might not get in, I realized how much I really wanted it,” Baker said. “I had talked to my partner-teacher about it and she encouraged me to do it, wishing she had done it before diving into her career.”

After applying at the end of the year, Baker had her interview in January 2017 and was accepted into the Peace Corps in February 2017. While at the time of applying Baker thought making the decision was nerve-wracking, she had no idea what was heading her direction upon her acceptance.

“What was even more stressful was the process of getting legally and medically cleared,” Baker said. “There were so many appointments to be made, and being in the big city so far away from home, I didn’t have a primary care physician to go to for consultation. All of my clearances were made by that July, and I left that September, but some people weren’t cleared until a couple of weeks before departure.”

Despite the stress and anxiety Baker experienced before leaving for Morocco, she is grateful for the experiences she has had in the Peace Corps thus far. While she has been in Morocco for six months already, Baker is in awe of how fast time is flying by and grateful for her eye-opening experience.

“Living with such humble and generous people has helped to realign the things that are really important to me in life,” Baker said. “I have grown more patient through the frustrations of learning such a different language, more tolerant and open minded while learning about a culture different from my own, and most importantly I’ve had the time to really consider the importance and what it means to self-care and self-love. There are days when I’m feeling the highest I have ever been, and there are days when I’m at the lowest of lows.”

Learning a new language and trying to communicate with the people she is around has been one of the hardest aspects of living abroad in Morocco for Baker, but she believes the struggle has helped her grow.

“Constantly trying to speak, think, teach, and relationship-build in another language can be really exhausting, but some of the best relationships I have made here have been done with little language, and I think that’s really beautiful,” Baker said. ”My mind sometimes wanders off to the things I am missing at home, but then I think about all of the opportunities and experiences I would be missing if I wasn’t here. Not a single ounce of me regrets my decision to come.”

In Morocco, Baker works on developing relationships in her community and develops programs with locals for women and youth. She is currently teaching aerobics to women and teaches English to people of all ages.

Emily Nye is a senior at USD majoring in business administration, and applied to join the Peace Corps for the year after her graduation, however she was not accepted into the program.  She had thought about joining throughout her college career, but as she settled into her second half of college, she began to seriously consider her post-college options.

“I started really getting serious junior year about thinking about what I wanted to do,” Nye said. “My best friend really wanted to go into the Peace Corps and we both talked about going into it. I went to an informational meeting last year for the Peace Corps, and it was pretty exciting.”

Nye faced the same worries as Baker did when thinking about post-graduate life.

“(I applied) mainly to volunteer because it’s scary to think about graduating and getting a full-time job,” Nye said. “I wanted to do something else and give back. I don’t think I was really ready for the idea of getting a boring job somewhere.”

There were other concerns Nye faced when she considered applying to the Peace Corps, one of them being the high crime rates in many of the developing nations to which the Peace Corps sends volunteers.

“They have a lot of problems with rape and sexual harassment with countries that people go to,” Nye said. “That’s really transparent on their part too. They show statistics about crimes that have been committed in each country. They say that you have to be smart and be careful because they are third-world countries, so it makes sense that there will be some risk.”

Nye applied to be a youth volunteer in Fiji, a small archipelago in the South Pacific. The position consisted of teaching kids about reproductive health. Nye explained why she wanted this position specifically.

“When I was a kid I was a camp counselor, and I remember having really influential after-school activity directors, and so I thought that would be great to go back and give that back to other countries as well,” Nye said.

Although USD has ranked in the top-20 schools for Peace Corps volunteers for the past three years, both Baker and Nye do not believe the school necessarily advertises it as a popular post-graduate option; they believe it stems from the university’s mission as a changemaker campus and Catholic university.

“I think USD ranks amongst the top 20 schools in Peace Corps for two main reasons,” Baker said. “The first is the same as me, because USD attracts and recruits similar-minded individuals who are passionate about peace, service, and changemaking. The second being that even people who did not identify with these values before likely do by the time they leave because of their prevalence in every aspect of a student’s experience at USD.“

Baker does not remember ever being pushed specifically to join the Peace Corps at USD, but believes the skills and passions she developed at USD guided her in its direction.

“I’d like to think that Peace Corps was always in the cards for me, but I definitely think that USD has had an influence on my being here,” Baker said. “USD is on the lower end of being in the ‘medium-sized school’ bracket of 5,000-15,000 students. If USD wasn’t such a small school, I would expect it to be in the top five.”

In agreement with Baker, Nye noted that during the application process, USD was not directly involved.

“It was definitely just me applying to the Peace Corps,” Nye said. “I didn’t have a USD advisor for the Peace Corps or anything.”

Nye also agreed that USD’s goals and mission might encourage students who are more inclined to go into the Peace Corps to come to USD.

“(The ranking is) probably a lot to do with USD’s main goal of being a changemaker campus,” Nye said. “I feel like the administration at USD tries really hard to have students try and give back as much as possible and make changes on a global scale. I feel like because we have one of the best study abroad programs in the nation, that goes hand in hand with going to the Peace Corps and the changemaking.”

The Peace Corps is a nontraditional post-college route, and wrestling with the positives and negatives of the program is something with which some students struggle. With USD’s changemaker campus and mission of giving back to the community, the university will most likely continue to open students’ minds to the idea of joining the Peace Corps.