Defining (and Redefining and Redefining) Success

As our first act as PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees), we are asked to write an aspiration statement detailing what we want to accomplish during our service and how we intend to adapt to our new surroundings. I think this is an excellent exercise, as it forces each of us to examine our reasons for accepting the all-hallowed invite and it gives us a chance to consider what our parameters for success actually are. Along with a revised resume, this is the only information our country staff receives about us prior to meeting us in-country. I sent mine this afternoon.

Aspiration Statement

Jennifer Christian

Malawi

September 26, 2008

A. In college, most of my friends were international students, the majority of whom had attended United World Colleges (www.uwc.org) prior to arriving at Middlebury. UWC selects top students from all over the world, regardless of their background, religion, politics, and/or ability to pay. These students then attend one of UWC’s twelve schools, where they study an IB curriculum alongside courses which emphasize environmental responsibility, international understanding, community service, peace studies, arts, and cultural pride. The Davis United World College Scholars I met and studied with at Middlebury were some of the most committed, hardworking, and socially-conscious students on campus. After graduation, they almost exclusively either returned home to use their education to improve the lives of their communities or took jobs in international organizations aimed at social improvement. The UWC program is my model for a successful educational aid organization.

I attended several different colleges throughout my university education and noticed that, unsurprisingly, not all international students had received the same level of education as those who had been chosen by UWC. In addition to the better funding found in UWC schools, which inevitably allows their students more opportunities, several specific educational components seemed to have helped prepare UWC students better than their non-UWC counterparts. Specifically, I found that correct language pronunciation greatly affected the way in which students were perceived, international awareness prepared students well both to study internationally and to make international connections inside and outside the classroom, and a strong sense of cultural pride made students passionately adamant about bettering the lives of those in their communities, as well as of those living in situations similar to those found in their home communities.

As a Secondary Education Volunteer, I would hope to focus on these types of issues in addition to general English education. I would hope to incorporate as many life skills issues (HIV/AIDS education, environmental education, female empowerment, etc.) as possible in my classes, as I believe that teaching English within a socially-conscious context highlights the usefulness of the language for the students, enhances students’ use of the language outside of class, and shows students ways in which they might use their language learning to better themselves and their community. As an English teacher, I feel that it is vitally important that my students understand that learning English is neither a replacement for their native language nor an endorsement of the cultural superiority of the English language, but rather it’s a tool to aid the survival of their culture and help their country become a part of the international community. In my opinion, then, teaching social responsibility goes hand in hand with teaching English, and I would hope that my work in Malawi would reflect that connection. My Cambridge certificate in teaching English as a Second Language has prepared me well for the English-teaching portion of my Volunteer service, and supplemented with the experience and training I’ll receive once I reach Malawi, I am confident that, even with fifty to one hundred students in my class, I will be able to help my students develop a skill which will allow them to contribute to the people around them.

B. On my first day of training as a YMCA camp counselor, a job I had never anticipated myself taking, I was asked to describe to a group of fellow trainees how, as a counselor, I would teach morals to my campers. I said the first thing that came to my mind: “I don’t believe in teaching morals.” The answer incited immediate and, on my part, unexpected, shock from the group. I continued. “I do, however, believe in fostering an environment in which children can create their own set of morals.” This includes, I believe, building self-confidence so that kids don’t feel the need to tear down others in order to improve their own status. Even more importantly, however, it means giving kids both time and opportunities to get to know one another personally. It’s easy, I think, to dismiss and / or accept stereotypical judgments of someone you don’t know; it’s much harder to ignore the opinions and contributions of a friend. It’s much harder to stereotype someone to whom you know the stereotypes don’t apply. Anything real I know about any culture other than my own has inevitably come from my understanding and appreciation of someone from that culture.

As is perhaps not uncommon, the advice I would give my campers is advice from which I, myself, could also benefit. I believe that my effectiveness in working with partners in Malawi will be directly related to my ability to form personal connections with them. They have to see me not as a white American girl here to help them, but rather as just another person, hoping to teach them what I know and learn from what they have to teach me. I don’t know to what extent I will be able to achieve this goal, but I’m pretty sure that my success in this arena will all but determine my success in all other arenas.

C. I am but a collection of all my former selves. I try not to hold too tightly to any beliefs or constants because it is only through the shucking of former absolutes that I have been able to discover new and important personal truths. Certainly one key to self-awareness is flexibility. It is my supposition that any absolute worth its salt will subsequently return no matter how many times you strip yourself of it. These persistent truths can become foundational pieces of the self; they make themselves indispensable, and as such, invaluable. Unlike their more fleeting counterparts, these attributes do not announce themselves with the loud volume and in-your-face presentation of fads or cultural norms to which we sometimes too desperately cling. Instead, they sit humbly, in silence, ingrained in memory and woven into the fiber of one’s being

“The more genuine part of my life is unrecognizable, extremely intimate, and impossible to define,” writes Clarice Lispector in The Hour of the Star. While my experiences in Malawi will inevitably change me, the ‘genuine part of my life’ is steadfast enough to allow me to revel in these changes while still remaining unalterably myself. I look forward to sharing myself with my village while at the same time discovering whatever new truths my life there has to offer.

If there is one truth that has prevailed throughout the more strenuous situations I’ve encountered it is that people are more easily, readily, and naturally adaptable than even they, themselves, might at first suspect. Malawi will be a tough adjustment, but not one I haven’t considered. Cultural adjustment, while certain to be a challenge, is the very reason I decided to become a volunteer for the Peace Corps. My hypothesis is that neither American culture nor Malawian culture is without fault; my presumption is that either culture can be bettered by learning from the strengths of the other. My hope is that I can teach the best parts of American culture and bring home aspects of Malawian culture which might improve the lives of people in my own American community.

D. Without a doubt, the most valuable skill the Peace Corps can give me in training is the ability to communicate with my Malawian community. I’m a firm believer that nonverbal communication can take a person a good distance, but being able to talk to the people around me will be the key to me integrating into my community. I have faith that the Peace Corps will prepare me well to do my job as a Secondary Educator in difficult conditions, to maintain my own health and safety in a new environment, and to know the cultural practices which will help me find a place in my village. My hope for Peace Corps training is that these things will become, as much as is possible in a short period of time, second nature, allowing me to focus not only on myself, but rather on what I have to offer those around me.

E. My future is the present, insomuch as the present determines my future. Lispector begins The Hour of the Star saying, “So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.” Perhaps this is the only certainty with which I, too, can align the life ahead of me. In my life as a top student at a top school, I had nothing but clear direction, an unwavering path. In my life as a writer after graduation, I had an open map full of possibilities and no better navigation than my own undeveloped intuition. I spent the first six months much the same way as I had spent the four years leading up to graduation—rushing from one place to the next, desperately seeking a success for which I knew I was destined. It took another six months for me to realize that this was only one way of living—a life, not the life.

I no longer chase the future. It will arrive, as it always has, on its own schedule. For now I put one foot in front of the other, immerse myself in the people and places around me, and listen to what each experience has to tell me about where to head next. As I was on a train to London on my way out of Britain at the end of last year, I wrote, “Find some words string them together, this was the only way forward.” As far as I can tell, it still is.