<p>I’m looking to the considerable collective wisdom here in the Cafe. DD has one year left of college, and is interested in the Peace Corps, but she (and her parents!) are concerned with the length–she would ideally like a comparable experience in an international location that only lasts about a year.</p>
<p>She is a studio art plus psychology double major, and is probably adding a minor in plant biology. She is used to roughing it in the extreme–she did a NOLS semester in the Amazon basin of Brazil.</p>
<p>Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I will speak to the two year Peace Corps commitment. Our daugher is beginning her SECOND year in the PC now. She says…the first year was a very steep learning curve including everything from the language to the culture to the money to the lifestyle…to her job…everything. This second year, she feels she has gained her stride and really has overcome the “newbie” hurdles of the first year, and is very excited about the prospect of being able to move forward without all of the new adjustments she had to make last year.</p>
<p>PLUS in this day and age, with communication (and even travel possibilities), contact with others is so much easier. We Skype weekly (voice only…but it’s great), and actually went to visit DD when she had a school break. Also, other PC parents have visited friends in her country and the parents do invite friends for meals, short trips etc. We had a couple of friends of DD join us at LEAST for a meal. She will join another family this weekend.</p>
<p>I know two years seems like a long time. BUT really the time has flown, and our DD will be home in less than a year…hard to believe. Seems like she just left.</p>
<p>I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 70s and my daughter was a PCV 3 years ago. Two years fly by, and my opinion is that you can’t have a meaningful immersion experience in less time, even if you already know the language (like Spanish). My daughter learned Bambara in Mali, and it took time. Many NGOs and even graduate schools basically require Peace Corps service as a qualifier. I guess it depends why your daughter wants to spend only one year. Teaching English or a Fulbright would be a very different experience from that of a Peace Corps Volunteer.</p>
<p>We know several students who taught English in other countries, France and China to be specific. The assignments were for a full school year. It’s not “Peace Corps like”…but it’s for a year.</p>
<p>DD1 and I both thought those 2+ years in the Peace Corps flew by. Like Thumper said, those first 6-12 months are a major adjustment period and you really don’t get “started” until after that period has passed. </p>
<p>DD2 is in South America teaching English now. She got the certification and pretty much went down on her own. She had to find her own jobs, etc.</p>
<p>And there are a few specific employers where recent peace corps service makes you automatically ineligible. So if you are interested in those places, peace corps is obviously not a step in the right direction.</p>
<p>thumper… peace corps service generally makes you ineligible to work in the intelligence community (15+ government agencies, including CIA, NSA, DIA, etc) for a period of 4-5 years.</p>
<p>Alternatively, people who work for the CIA are permanently ineligible for the peace corps, and people who work in other intelligence agencies are ineligible for many years, if not permanently.</p>
<p>The policies are in place to try to protect PCVs… if someone found PCVs that were secretly working for a US intelligence agency, then PCVs all over the world would be in significant danger. This is also the reason intelligence agencies are not allowed to use the peace corps as non official cover (NOC is when a CIA (or other agency) operative poses as someone else, for example a businessman or reporter overseas… these are the people that “officially” are not employed by the CIA and the CIA will deny any connection. It’s a contrast with official cover, where the CIA person will carry a diplomatic passport and pose as a member of another government agency). I don’t think they are allowed to use the Church and the Red Cross as NOCs either, for the same reasons.</p>
<p>As I said… a very very small subset of employers, but if that is the field you are interested in, then peace corps is not for you.</p>
<p>I didn’t find that information so perhaps links would be helpful. What I did find was that depending on the continued contact with residents in the Peace Corp country, security clearances were evaluated on a case by case basis.</p>
<p>here is a quote from a DIA employment announcement:
</p>
<p>there is a question on the CIA application that reads:
</p>
<p>here is Army Regulation 614-200:
</p>
<p>foreign contacts are something that is always evaluated very closely in background investigations.</p>
<p>I don’t have time to search all the intelligence agencies, but I hope that helps provide you some evidence. Peace corps does not disqualify you permanently from the career field, but it does temporarily (multiple years).</p>
<p>“thumper… peace corps service generally makes you ineligible to work in the intelligence community (15+ government agencies, including CIA, NSA, DIA, etc) for a period of 4-5 years.”</p>
<p>I’ve got a funny story about that from my time in Iran. My “boss” had been a PC volunteer sent to Afghanistan to teach, get this, “choral music”. Hmmm. So he ended up running the CIA front organization that employed me! (I had no idea what I had walked into at the time - I thought I’d come to teach English and Shakespeare and be a “goodwill” ambassador of some sort, which I was, but…)</p>
<p>Interesting, but if I do a FOI request, they will find no record of me whatsoever…</p>
<p>My $.02 is that you shouldn’t pass over a chance to serve in the Peace Corps on the chance that you might work for an intelligence agency in the future. The hiring process for just about any intelligence agency is long and uncertain and there are absolutely no guarantees that you will actually be hired. Any number of things in your application or security clearance can stop a candidacy dead in its tracks, and hiring may go in spurts and may or may not work out with your circumstances. So, if you give up the opportunity to do Peace Corps now, you’d be giving up a concrete opportunity to grasp at shadows in the future. </p>
<p>If you want to serve in the Peace Corps, then go for it and let the future sort itself out. Like others have posted, you’re not out of the running for an intelligence job for good, just for a few years. So, file the info away for future reference when applying for post Peace Corps employment, but don’t give up the opportunity to serve in the Peace Corps for a future possibility that is so uncertain.</p>