Peace Corps Application (it continues)

I've dedicated today to finishing up my Peace Corps application.

I've just realized how much of a humanist I am. I fit it to the "t." I didn't realize that writing this would cause me to get so sentimental and emotional.

Here's alittle rough draft of what I have so far. It's an unedited raw narrative. Editing and polish will come:


Prompt:

You’re reasons for wanting to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. Why these reasons are related to your past experience and life goals.

Why these reasons are related to your past experiences and life goals.
It feels like my whole life I have been preparing to do some activity like the Peace Corps. I had an interesting up bringing. Being raised in a Mormon family does interesting ways to how you perceive your future interests and what you want to do with the rest of your life. Coming from a Mormon background, I remember one of the most fundamental parts of Mormonism is the commitment to service of community. To forming relationships with those around you and truly making friend ships for life by treating each other as human beings.

One of the things that I was socialized to do from a young age was to go on a mission when I was 19 for two years. In that period, for a mission a young man goes out into the world to spread the gospel through good works and service. I remember I was at church one day and I was talking to my strong feminist mother regarding going on a mission. She told me that I could also do the Peace corps and that was my first realization of what the peace Corps was all about.

At about the age of 17, I returned from a leadership seminar on Intelligence, Security and Defense in Washington DC. I realized that I could no longer live a religious life and be the type of person I wanted to be. Before this time, I had given a great deal of thought to the history of religion and especially to the religious wars in Europe. I realized that I could no longer limit myself to the religious and often intolerant way of thinking. I became a secular humanist. I had to reject giving service to other human beings as means to convert them. I found that the satisfaction of helping others comes from actually helping others and seeing that they are better off than when you found them.