Aspiration Statement

Welcome to my new blog for my upcoming service in Costa Rica with the Peace Corps! I hope I am able to update this thing on a regular basis, but access to the Internet is not guaranteed once we are placed  in our assignments so updates may be infrequent or non-existent after the first of the year. I apologize in advance.

For those of you who don't know, I went to South Korea for a year to teach English and that trip made me realize how much I enjoy living abroad and experiencing new people, places and cultures. My ex-girlfriend and I kept up a blog while we were there: www.katieandorbrian.blogspot.com. If you don't have time to read the entries there is a link on the right side of the screen to our picture albums! Enjoy!

Once a Peace Corps applicant has been selected for service, an updated resume and an aspiration statement must be e-mailed to the Peace Corps staff in your host country. The aspiration statement is meant to give the staff with whom you will be training shortly a better idea of who you are and why you decided to join the Peace Corps. It also gives the individual writing it a chance to really think through the thoughts, feelings, desires and goals that led up to this point and it serves as a reminder once you begin your service as to what in the world you were thinking before you began! It is split up into five topics:

A. The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.
B. Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.
C. Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.
D. The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community and project.
E. How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends.

I don't think my statement is very well-written; I'm posting it so that people will know why I decided to go to the Peace Corps and what I hope to accomplish in Costa Rica. So without further ado, here it is:

 Aspiration Statement

Brian Polhamus

Costa Rica

October 4th, 2010

As I sit here in front of my computer with my cursor blinking, waiting for me to begin, I realize that my true aspiration at this moment is to simply complete this statement in a coherent manner! There are so many thoughts and feelings going through me right now; I feel as though it would be hard for me to put my finger on one and impossible to explain it fully. I'm excited but nervous, happy and yet a little sad, confident but scared, empowered and powerless... the only constant is a deep feeling of gratitude. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve with the Peace Corps; grateful to my friends and family who have given me support and who will continue to support me during my service. I'm grateful for another chance to go abroad and teach ESL and to take everything I learned from my first trip and apply it to this one. If I can build on the things I learned and accomplished during my time in South Korea, then I will consider my service in Costa Rica a success.

A:  My reasons for joining the Peace Corps were not wholly unselfish, and as such, my aspirations are not either. Of course, I want to help the people of Costa Rica in any way I can. I'm going as an English teacher, so my main objective is to help my students and those around me learn as much English as possible while I'm there, but I also want to help in other ways, in any way. I've often thought about how awesome it would be to work on a well or bring power lines to a remote village, help build huts or dig ditches: anything I can do to help I want to do. I'm sure that these opportunities will be few and far between or even non-existent, but these are the things that I think would be the most meaningful contributions of all. Dirty jobs that have nothing at all to do with my job description but would significantly improve the lives of those around me, that is what I hope to do.

Having said that, I picked the Central/South American region specifically so that I could use what Spanish I already know and become fluent by the end of my term. I've taken six years of Spanish in middle school and high school and another two semesters in college and I think it's tragic how little I've used the language and how far from fluent I really am. I also realize that the Peace Corps will look great on a resume and would help me land a job when I return. Even though I've been reluctant to join the "real world" just yet and get a job, I know that someday I will have to and my service with the Peace Corps will help me to develop leadership skills and to become more patient and adaptable. Another aspiration of mine for my service is to become a better person. I'm not even sure what I mean by that or in what way I hope to improve but I think that the person I will become by the end of my service will be better than the person I am today.

In terms of what attributes I will bring to my job, I think flexibility and adaptability are crucial when working in a foreign country. It may not be necessary to do everything the way your host country co-workers would want you to, but it is important to take the time to understand their way of doing things and to pick your battles. The beginning is not the time to convince them your way is best or have a my-way-or-the-highway attitude. I've found that the easiest way to win the respect of your colabradores has little to do with work and much more to do with your willingness to experience their culture. Trying their foods or attemping to learn their language went so much further with my Korean partners than having good ideas at meetings ever could!

I honestly haven't had much time to think about how I'm going to take my teaching experiences from Korea and translate them to Costa Rica. Pronunciation and learning the Roman alphabet were the two biggest issues I found in Korea, but I don't really see those as being major issues for Spanish speakers. After I quit my job on the 10th, I'll have more time to think and plan for my classes. I can also consult the members of the Hispanic church that meets in my church's building on what they thought was difficult about learning English.

B:  One of my close friends whom I have known since childhood spent this summer in Uganda following around a Ugandan pastor he had met at seminary. My friend studies peacekeeping at school and the purpose of his trip was to experience peacekeeping in real life situations. When he came home and told me all about his trip, I was surprised to find that he had never engaged in any discussions or settlements or any real peacekeeping. I asked him why... that was the point of his trip, wasn't it? He told me something that his friend, the pastor, said to him over and over while he was there. He said that it didn't make sense for him to try to negotiate between sides if he did not understand them. He needed to understand the people, the culture, the language and the situation that this conflict arose from. It wouldn't help (in fact, it might hurt) if he knew one side but not the other. First, he had to spend a lot of time learning and observing before he could begin to make an impact and better the lives of the people he meant to serve. This is the strategy by which I hope to better the lives of Costa Ricans in my town. I will learn, listen and observe for a period of time; then I will work to meet their expressed needs.

C:  Adapting to a new culture while maintaining your own is a delicate balancing act. It's important to have a give-and-take mentality with regards to culture. I don't think anyone should ever have to completely abandon their culture, nor should they have to completely accept a new one. I think the best interactions between members of different cultures come from times of sharing. I had previously mentioned that one of my goals for my trip was to become fluent in Spanish. I think it would be great if I could convince my native friends to speak English to me while I spoke Spanish to them. We could teach each other our own versions of handshakes or games that we play. Sharing culture, in my mind, is a way to meld two or more cultures together to form a new subculture that everyone can gain from.

My strategy for adapting to Costa Rican culture is similar to my strategy for working with Costa Ricans: take some time to observe their culture, reflect on how it is similar to and/or different from mine and find a middle ground. I will keep an open mind and try new things, learn as much as I can, be as friendly and approachable as possible and just be myself. I will win over the people in this way and I'm sure they will win over me and we will learn so much more from each other than language.

D:  From reading the Volunteer handout, pre-service training sounds really intense and beneficial. Certainly, I will learn a lot on a broad range of topics, but I think the language and culture training are the most indispensable. I'm a bit worred about my teaching skill, but two years is plenty of time to practice and get better. I hope to learn enough about the culture before I start my service so that I don't make a bad first impression by doing or saying something taboo to my co-workers or my neighbors, or worse, my host family. That would be a disappointing way to start my service! Learning the language is huge though. I want to be able to have a real conversation with the natives by the time pre-service training is over. I would like to be able to get to know the people around me and to make myself known to them, also. And I think it would really help me to teach English if I understand where they're coming from with Spanish and to anticipate what problems they might have. In Korea, I was discouraged from learning their language and using it in the classroom because they wanted me to completely immerse my students in English. I understood their strategy and it definitely has its benefits, but I would never have found out why they had such great trouble pronouncing certain sounds if I hadn't taken up learning Korean. Only after I realized that their alphabet was missing letters and sounds common to the English language was I able to emphasize teaching those sounds in class. I was able to pinpoint the differences in the word structures of the two languages and teach them how English is similar and how it is different from Korean. I hope to learn Spanish much better than I ever learned Korean and to use that knowledge to bridge the gap between the two languages as I teach after my time in pre-service training.

E:  How will my experience with the Peace Corps affect my personal and professional aspirations after my service ends? That's a great question! Looking back on what got me to this point, the only thing I can say is that life is unpredictable and it seems as though the choices you make and the experiences you have build on each other, but in ways you wouldn't expect. I never thought that going to a Bible school for a year in New York would get me accustomed to being on my own in a world very different from my own to the point that I would even consider a trip to Ghana with my university. I never thought that I would catch the travel bug and go from a month's "vacation" in Ghana with my friends to living and teaching English in South Korea for a year. Everyone, including myself, assumed that I would come home from Korea satisfied with the experience I had there and get a job and settle down in the U.S. Now I'm about to begin a 27-month service with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica! These things are a far cry from what I thought I would be doing by this point in my life as a child (mathematician) or as a high-schooler (engineer) or when I was a Finance major in college, but I wouldn't have it any other way. The only prediction that I will afford myself at this time is that wherever I go and in whatever I do I will always be looking for ways to help people.