Being in Peace Corps is Best in Your...
The average age of a Peace Corps Volunteer may be 28, but as a quick look at our volunteers in
Macedonia testifies, volunteers come from all walks and stages of life. We surveyed a select few
volunteers to learn why they chose the best time to enter the Peace Corps. Here's what they told us.
And remember – just because it's too late for you to turn back time and join the Peace Corps in your
20s (or, well, decide to hold off until your 50s) doesn't mean it's too late for you to help your friends
back home make the right decision about when to drop it all for the enviable Peace Corps wage.
… 20s, by Zach Koslap
This is sort of an unfair argument, because practically everything in life is best in your 20s.
Peace Corps is no different. Going on adventures, seeing the world, working on projects,
hanging with grandmas, and going to discos are all better in your 20s. Even sitting in your
room for an entire day is better in your 20s – who wouldn't swap age for the youth of a 23-yearold? But apparently this is not convincing enough, so here are the reasons why Peace Corps is
best in your 20s.
The Peace Corps requires an active lifestyle. Y may have to keep up with a class of crazy
ou
kids for five days a week. Y may find yourself teaching a dance class, or running around your
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town barefoot. One day you may even decide to run a half marathon on a whim. The young
bodies of those in their 20s are best able to handle this level of activity. There's not a better time
in your life to sprain ankles, cripple a knee, and endure brutal Ohrid summers than your 20s.
We in our 20s get accused of a lot. We're told we don't have the experience. Or that we're
too cocky in our youth. We hear the older generations repeatedly call the 20s the ?????? age.
Maybe that moniker is true, because those of us in our 20s know how to use our good looks
and our empty heads to have fun in the Peace Corps. Our youth and beauty have attracted
deckos and devojkas, and our lack of neurons didn't stop us from going barehanded fishing that
one time. Sometimes the advantages of our youthful vitality combine with the disadvantages of
our slowheadedness to create quintessential Peace Corps moments, like diving for the cross
during Vodici, or walking around our villages for an entire summer without a shirt.
But 20-somethings aren't just all fur coat and no trousers. Sometimes we can beat the older
folks at their own game. A generation raised by spell checking can still dominate a spelling
bee. We might miss a microwave more than any other volunteer, but we can still put together a
fine cookbook. And while we're supposedly surfing the Internet all day, we're pretty extreme in
our Peace Corps library maintenance.
Perhaps the last great thing about doing the Peace Corps in your 20s is that – for the most
part – you finish the Peace Corps in your 20s. Y can end your service still in the prime of
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your life, with a new perspective and the same potential ahead of you. For those few who start
in their 20s and end in their 30s, broken and rundown, they at least have the fleeting memories
of an active, successful, and fun Peace Corps service done right.
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