Walk On
It’s okay to quit the Peace Corps.
I’ve gotten a couple of email lately that made me really nervous. I responded to them personally, but it made me want to say something here, on this blog. I know a lot of Peace Corps volunteers read this, so:
It’s okay to quit Peace Corps. It’s okay to ET – leave your stint early. It’s okay to leave after two weeks if you can tell the situation is wrong. It’s okay to leave after 18 months if something is making you nervous. It’s your life, and it matters, and it’s okay to get out early.
Leaving Peace Corps won’t ruin your life. 33% of all PCVs do it. It won’t ruin your career, either. I promise. Not even if you want to work in development. It will not ruin your dream of having meaningful work and an international life.
If you want to leave Peace Corps and you think you can’t because it’ll ruin your career, email me. Alanna.shaikhATgmail.com. I’ll help you figure out what to do. Not some paid careers list thing, just me, pro bono, helping another person because I like to help.
Don’t do anything drastic. It’s okay. Your life isn’t ruined and it isn’t over and you are not a failure. Sometimes things are just a bad fit and that’s all right. No one will hold it against you.
We all make mistakes. I left a job I loved because it was the wrong job for me at that point in my life. I got fired from my very first job out of college. I flaked out on an internship with a woman I respected and I think she still dislikes me as a result. I cancelled an internship with CARE Egypt because I needed to go home already and not be in Cairo any more. And I still got to go have a whole career full of stuff I love to do with brilliant colleagues surrounding me.
You thought Peace Corps was the right fit for you and it’s not. Just fix your error, get out, and find the next step in your life. I really will help you if you like. My email’s right up there.
Don’t do anything drastic. Your life is not over. Neither is your career. Don’t make any dangerous decisions because you feel bad right now. Just get home, wherever that is to you, and find your next step once you get there.
Don’t stay if you fear for your safety, and don’t stay if you’re afraid you’ll harm yourself. Nothing is worth that.
(photo credit: marysuephotoeth)
Tags: Peace Corps
November 16th, 2011 at 12:11 am
Wonderful, heartfelt post as always. Thanks.
Sometimes making a tough decision like leaving shows more courage than sticking it out. When I was a PCV I stuck it out in a bad situation… a questionable decision based on pure ego.
November 16th, 2011 at 12:21 am
Agreed.
I quite the Peace Corps just 3 months after I finished training. I loved our training, enjoyed my fellow volunteers, and had a great time: http://www.bellybuttonwindow.com/1997/peace_corps/
Yet the Peace Corps program had many issues, and I was tired to waiting for them to sort through it all. Leaving was hard, but I have never regretted it for a moment. I stayed in the country and got a private industry job and had a whole new career.
Now, 15 years later, I have never once had my ET held against me. In international development or even at PCV get-togethers. I still recommend the Peace Corps, and leaving it if the program doesn’t feel right. Life is short. Don’t squander it doing something you dislike.
November 16th, 2011 at 12:27 am
Thank you for this, Alanna.
November 16th, 2011 at 1:08 am
I’d like to echo this sentiment. Some of the people I most admire from my Peace Corps group are those who made the difficult decision to leave when they knew it really wasn’t right for them. Each person had a unique and valid reason for leaving and knew him/herself well enough to know the right choice. Deciding to ET is much better than sticking it out just for the sake of finishing. I knew a few PCVs who did that, which only made them (and those around them) miserable.
I have a lot of respect for people who decide to take the risk of quitting, and this doesn’t just apply to PC. I was reminded of this when I got home from my service and started a masters program that turned out to be completely unfulfilling. Quitting that program to switch schools and degrees was my version of an ET. Even though many people around me said I should just stick it out, I took the leap. I am much happier person for it.
November 16th, 2011 at 1:28 am
Wow. Looks like you’ve been hit with some hard stuff from folks lately. You’ve done a good thing by posting this and reminding people that knowing when to fold ‘em, as the song says, is not the end of the world or a life. You are a good role model in the ways you show your readers how you take care of yourself.
November 16th, 2011 at 1:30 am
Totally agree. And I’d also point out that if you ET after, say, a year or a year and a half, or even 6 months, the only people who are likely to notice that from your CV are RPCVs, who would never hold it against you.
November 16th, 2011 at 1:50 am
I disagree w/this article. If every volunteer who felt “nervous” or confused or, frankly, entirely ineffective, quit the Peace Corps, none of us would have finished. That’s just part of the process. Obviously Peace Corps is not right for everyone and those w/safety and/or personal concerns should do what’s best for them, but I cannot tell you how many returned volunteers I know who wanted to quit during their first year and didn’t and are now so thankful they didn’t.
In my opinion, a large % of volunteers quit out of frustration that nothing is getting accomplished, though it’s very difficult to gauge that early in your service. Also, the technical side of Peace Corps’ work is only one dimension. Many of the skills that make people very successful in American society actually make your life harder in the Peace Corps, e.g. being task-oriented or deadline-focused. That’s why people who approach the Peace Corps with more of a focus on the whole experience tend to do better than those looking to really affect immediate change in their communities. And *every* agency has its issues!
Totally agree that your life/career will go on w/o hiccups but I think it’s more about (a) what you’re missing out on and (b) the investment that Peace Corps, taxpayers, and your host community make in you.
November 16th, 2011 at 8:10 am
I agree — it’s okay to quit the Peace Corps, or any other program or job that is not a good fit for you. In American culture, there is a stigma against quitters (“Quitters never win, and winners never quit”) that is hard to move past.
After college, I applied to the Peace Corps but ultimately chose a different volunteer program in community development because I really wanted to live and work in the Philippines (and Peace Corps did not have programs there at the time – hope I’m not dating myself!). I quit halfway through the year-long program. Quitting was – to this day – one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But I realized that it was not a good fit, I was miserable, and it ultimately was not worth staying. Looking back, it was absolutely the right decision for me – even if it meant disappointing some people. Ironically (or somewhat fittingly?) I ended up living and working in the Philippines again later on in life.
I echo Erin’s comment above about how knowing yourself well enough is key to knowing whether it’s time to move on. This was certainly the case for me in my own decision to quit a volunteer program. I was aware of my strengths, weaknesses, values, and priorities, as well as what it would take for me to make my best contribution. The situation I was in was not a good match for those.
I’ve actually been blogging lately about the importance of self-awareness for careers in international development – if you’re interested in reading, including some self-reflection exercises, see http://developmentcrossroads.com/2011/11/the-most-important-person-to-know-in-aid-and-development/
November 16th, 2011 at 9:25 am
I wish I could have read this in March 1995, when I was agonizing over the decision of quitting the Peace Corps. More than the guilt of leaving, I felt like a failure for giving up. I had made it seven months, and like some of the other post-ers above, had a wonderful in-country training experience. But for a variety of reasons, none of which can be clearly defined as being a single reason for leaving, that March, I knew I had to go.
After, I always felt I had to launch into an explanation about why I left the Peace Corps (which always changed depending on whom I was speaking with) or sometimes, I just never discussed that I had ever been at all. But I wish that I had just let all that guilt of quitting go at that time.
Peace Corps gave me lifelong friends, an opportunity to better understand myself (especially what works for me and what doesn’t), and my husband (who was in the same training group with me – not a bad souvenir from a Peace Corps experience). And as Shana, above noted, whatever the situation is – Peace Corps, another volunteer program, a job, or a school committee – sometimes the best decision you can make is quitting if it’s not a good fit.
Alanna is completely right in that quitting the Peace Corps did not mean that I wouldn’t have a meaningful careers or future international experiences. I have been living overseas now for eight years! But still, I wish I had known Alanna back in 1995, just to make me feel a little better about my decision – but reading this today, that tinge of regret is fading even more, as it should.
November 16th, 2011 at 3:03 pm
[...] says Alanna [...]
November 16th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
I’m currently serving in the Peace Corps, in Burkina Faso, and while I agree wholeheartedly with this post, I’m still glad I didn’t read it 3 weeks ago in training. I was pretty miserable then, and it might have inspired me to give in to the discomfort and quit. Fortunately, I’m a bit older than your fresh-out-of-college volunteer, and experience told me to tough it out.
There’s a difference between “not a good fit” and “whatdoyoumeanidonthaveashowerthissucksbye”; one is a matter of life choices, while the other is just a question of comfort. I know the writer knows the difference, but I wish she had been a bit more explicit in pointing it out for the 22 year olds who might not.
Still, all in all…an excellent and accurate post from an excellent and accurate blog.
November 16th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Great post, Alanna.
I’d imagine there are many others who aren’t in the Peace Corps, but who are facing similar questions about the direction of their lives. For those folks, I highly recommend joining Alanna’s development careers email list. You get her expert advice in a more personalized format and lots of good discussion about life in aid and development. Well worth subscribing.
November 16th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
I find it remarkable that the question to ET or not is more difficult than the decision to go in the first place. My group had at least 25% opting to ET. The first wave took place in training, resulting understandably from the considerably potent initial shock. After training we dropped off in waves and individually, mostly from the trauma of experiencing war or serious health problems. I think we had a few at the beginning of the 2nd rainy season too. The most spectacular ET took place in row 39 of a 747 over the North Atlantic Ocean. The fellow never made it to the training site.
There are plenty of other great reasons to ET from Peace Corps: poorly managed program, corruption, lack of accomplishment, the CD is an ass. Either way it adds the potential of layering a mood of self-doubt on top of the process of readjusting to the United States.
Of all the people considering the question who opted to stay, the reason was the same. They wanted to quit, but they felt trapped because they felt they had nothing to go back to. Also not a great situation.
Either way it is a terribly difficult decision with potentially serious ramifications. I remain very enthusiastic about Peace Corps, and I will always treasure the five months that I stayed in-country. Yet I do not actively recommend Peace Corps for others. It’s too unpredictable how it will turn out in any given case.
As a post-script, I returned to my site 30 years later to work professionally for a year. In so many ways it was as though I had never left…..
November 23rd, 2011 at 5:54 am
I just finished four years as a PCV, and I agree with your bottom line. Particularly if there is a safety issue at the heart of the matter.
I’ve seen a lot of PCV’s come through since I joined, and we tend to be type-A, goal-oriented people. That can work against us. At the end of my first year of service, I finally admitted to myself that my project was going to be a failure. I was supposed to be helping a group of 20 businesses adopt sustainable practices and reap economic benefits from doing so. Totally doable, but also totally dependent upon collaboration within the group. That’s how and why we failed. Could not overcome the mistrust and cultural resistance to collaboration.
So I faced a choice: if I pinned my definition of success to my performance relative to Goal 1 (transfer of technical skills, or, in my specific case, the adoption of sustainable practices by the whole group), I was going to fail and be miserable. But if I chose to measure my success against all three PC goals, then I could still do well in two out of three.
For non-PCV’s, the second and third goals of PC boil down to the cultural exchange of Americans learning about foreign cultures, and foreigners learning about American culture. I’m a simple guy, so I call it “Having fun and telling your friends back home about it.” When I thought about it that way, going for two out of three seemed like an easy choice to make. I stayed, and had so much fun that when my time ended, I changed programs and stayed two more years.
You know what? Not only have I had a blast, I have also had far more impact at work than I could have imagined. I can’t explain it, and I don’t want readers to think the collaboration-problem was solved, but on a one-on-one basis, the business owners, including many outside of the group to which I was assigned, got a lot out of my time there. And so did I.
Here’s what I know: it isn’t my accomplishments at work that will define the memories I will cherish from my PCV experience, it is the friendships. I have broken bread with many families, shared the challenges of their lives, and celebrated major milestones, all sober and earnestly, with people who have enriched me in ways no job in the U. S. ever has. (And I’ve had a few of those; suck it, Wall Street!)
So to PCV’s thinking of leaving because of frustration at goal one; consider shifting your focus, and investing as much energy in goals two and three as you have at work. You might be as lucky as I was, and end up hitting 2.5 goals out of three.
On the other hand, if staying will make you miserable, or compromise your safety, get out and don’t second-guess the decision. And thank you for your service!