A Real Hero, College (ft. Electric Youth)

Recently, when reaching out to a group with interest in post-Peace Corps travel options, my community received an excellent opportunity.  In the summer of 2013, we will host some biology students to help us study our turtle populations!  This is amazing for two reasons: this was the project my community counterpart asked me for and well, duh.  We might get biology students to help us perform population surveys.

Good news in the Peace Corps feels different.  Between the compulsive moments of disbelief as they turn into surrealistic truths, good news never feels quite real.  Even when good things happen in front of you, and you watch it with your own eyes, it still isn’t happening.  But luckily, the inverse is true, too.  To a point, no matter how much ridiculous, bad leaning stuff happens, it sometimes feels like it’s not really happening.  This two year period is not true, while being an enhanced version of reality.

It’s a mixed blessing in a sense.  Good news is always good, but sometimes, when it doesn’t come through, it’s heartbreaking.  You can want something for your community, for you, so badly only to have it not come to fruition.  And when the good news is “too good to be true”, it’s a defense mechanism to never really believe it.

And when it becomes real – when you start to plan, to bring the details together – it’s like dancing underwater.  It feels light and heavy, like you’re daydreaming in class.  It’s something that isn’t actually real, but because you want it so badly, you believe that it is.  And the whole time, you still don’t let yourself believe that something that cool, that incredible, that perfect is actually happening.  But you know, deep down, it is.  Or at least you hope so.

I see it with my friends here, too.  We apply for grants in quiet, in secret – and we don’t tell anyone other than the people we’re working with directly until we have the money in our hands.  And if our grant isn’t approved, no one knows.  There’s no need for embarrassment, no need for sadness, because the opportunity wasn’t real to begin with.  It’s the Peace Corps defense mechanism.

For the past year, I’ve been searching for opportunities for something like this to happen.  A big project that would define my Service, and maybe point toward my future.  And here it is.  This is what makes Peace Corps the hardest job I’ll ever love.

You can read about the NGO sending Students to my site at http://www.thescienceexchange.org/