During the PC application process there are three seperate instances when you need to describe your reasons for wanting to serve. The first couple questions are tailored specifically to your assignment (Why do you want to teach in a developing country?) and the others are more general. I only had room for 500 characters or so, but this is what I came up with. Maybe it will help some of you (mostly family, who think I'm crazy) understand...

A great friend once me what the most universal human emotion is, fear or laziness. I said fear. He then asked me what I thought the most prevalent American emotion is. I said laziness. There are reasons great and small which contribute to my want to serve as a peace corps volunteer at this point in my life; reasons which stem from a need to use my body, mind and soul in a way that reflects something much more than fearful or lazy American.
The physical and intellectual reasons seem simple enough. I am a healthy twenty-four year old college graduate with no outstanding responsibilities, other than to myself. I feel free financially, having paid the majority of my college loans. I am single and surprisingly, do not at this point of my life feel it urgent to find a husband and live the cliché American way. The only things I feel responsible for today are my happiness and my career as an educator.
The more emotional or spiritual reasons have been a long time coming. I have been fortunate to be able to collect inspiration from so many people in my life. My high school Art teacher, who I am still in touch with today, served in Bolivia as a small business volunteer in the mid-90s. I remember the day when she told us about her experience. Since that day, about eight years ago, I knew the Peace Corps was something I wanted to be involved in. After high school I started to research Eastern religions pretty extensively. Having been born into a predominantly Protestant family, and attending two private Catholic schools, I felt it was important to expand my world view and be more mindful of our intercultural differences. Beyond my Education classes at Plymouth State, I found myself signing up for classes like “Enlightenment, Love & Lit,” “Cultural Diversity,” and “Arts of the Far East” in order to fulfill my elective credits. Other influences have been my Grandmother, the most compassionate person I have ever known, my Father, who has been unconditionally supportive of every out-of-the-ordinary idea I have ever proposed, and my friends, the most original thinking, truth seeking people I’ve come to know.
J.D. Salinger summed up my attitude nicely: "Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior... Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-- if you want. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.” If I can fearlessly help someone, or teach someone, or possibly inspire someone to also do these things, I will feel more successful as a human being and if I am not lazy and can 'be the change I want to see in the world' then I will undoubtedly feel more successful as an American.

While attempting to clean my hard drive and sort through old writing and whatnot I came upon the piece I coupled with my Photo II independent study project. The photos explore the extreme impact technology is having on our natural world, and more specificially our American souls. The author shall remain nameless unless otherwise requested, though his prose was/still is greatly appreciated:

Half-ghost, Half-Earth
The delicious torment that is life, steeped in paradox and rhythmic like the flows of jazz is no more than a fleeting conscious glimpse of the ephemeral beauties and all their privies. The human; no line between the inside and outside, no boundary between the self and that of breezes, suns, rivers, spruce trees and mountains, no line between the absolute infinite and the sorrowful temporary- a culmination of facets and conditions and energies and matter and metaphysical forces, flowing and fluxing, all part of sacred link in the unbroken chain of illuminated life in which the perfect conscious source manifests itself through all phenomena. We live in two worlds, but are rarely aware of that which sits just beyond our minds: we are the source, the force, the infinitely serene and the imprisoned human, born into the dream of life where we struggle and long and feel and love and fuck and wonder and only seldom glimpse the immense suchness. Like a transparent stream of energy, we are the conscious eye of the godhead, the universe, witnessing itself in the constant becoming; birth, death and time all essential but irrelevant. The passage of time simply being the mind’s perception of cause and effect, an infinite regress not characterized through the individual but rather through the chain of life which acts as a single unified mother earth-mind. There is only one moment and it is right now, time, like a dream is ethereal. With one foot in this world and the other foot in the next, we all share the same dreamtime, we walk the same dreamtime. Its just a dream and its sad and somehow beautiful but we hold on to it anyways. Show me something real, something concrete, something stable and lasting, I want to scream sometimes… but alas, nothing in this dream is anymore real than any other dream you ever had. Maybe that gives you comfort to know we are hopelessly inconsequential in this void, maybe its comforting to know there is so much more beyond… or maybe its scary, terrifying even, to realize that our solid little microcosms of reason and stability mean almost nothing. Fuck that, it is liberating to walk this earth and know I’m not important- monkey with a brain. I can dig. Embrace the chaos? Perhaps. The illusion of a separate self is the price the human must pay to be alive. Maybe even aware of the rules, but still subject to them, everyone must play a role in this comedic tragedy.