PC Motivation

So why would I give up a good, relatively stable engineering job to go join the Peace Corps? I'm sure lots of people think I'm crazy, but have been too polite to say so to my face. It's been a long decision process for me, though.

When I graduated from college, I had two things in mind that I wanted to shoot for, either immediately or in a couple of years. The first one was the Peace Corps, and the second was getting an MBA. These are pretty different options, but they do share similarities that I liked. They would open up opportunities to work internationally, and both would be great personal growth opportunities.

Last year, I started thinking about the MBA. I knew a lot of people from college and work who were getting their MBAs, either part-time, full-time, or executive MBAs. Going to a top-tier school would have opened countless doors, and I could have probably had any type of career path that I wanted (not that getting in would have been easy). I currently do a lot of volunteering outside of work, and I really wanted to make service-to-others part of my post-MBA career (my current career is more service-based than a job in industry, it's just not very personal...I can't go out and talk to someone about how I improved his/her life). The first step for me was just taking the GMAT, and after some studying, I scored well enough that no school could use my score against me. I then started researching MBA programs around the world. It would have just been amazing to go to school abroad for two years and really learn about the global economy while living in another culture, but I started filtering schools out because of various mismatches with my personal goals. Most of the schools that I whittled off my list were not strong in the areas relating to social responsibility or non-profit management. I wanted a program where I could focus on giving back to the community and creating a career out of that. My list in hand (finally down to 4-5 schools, all in the US), I actually started writing draft application essays. Topics can change from year to year, but some core questions always remain the same (why our school, why an MBA, etc.). I even went so far as to talk with current students, find out about student groups I wanted to join, etc.--the whole nine yards!

So this took me to about April of 2008. At this point I had started a couple of the why an MBA essays, and I had focused my post-B-school plans more. All of my plans revolved around a desire to do good for other people, whether it be part of a corporate social responsibility group, managing a non-profit, or working with the developing world. This trend made me think back to my other goal, the Peace Corps. I just felt that B-school wasn't quite what I really wanted at this time--great experience, but it felt like I would be going with the expected norm and not following the path that would be right for me. With my work, leadership, and cross-cultural experiences, I probably could have gotten into a decent school. But I stopped. And thought. Hard. About what I really wanted in life. I still think a B-school experience would be invaluable for the soft-skills that I would learn, but I felt like PC would do a better job of combining my current desires of living in another culture and helping people. The timing also pointed more towards PC, since I felt like it would be harder to do PC later in life with a family, kids, house, etc., than go to B-school. So began my PC application adventure.

The thought process I went through would result in different answers for different people. There is no right answer. But, I do firmly believe in going with choices that I won't regret, and I think for me, PC over an MBA is the right choice at this point in my life. 30 years from now, I could probably still go back and get an MBA if they let me in, but I don't want to regret not doing PC when I could.