The summer before
my senior year of college, I did a lot of traveling. And then, I did a lot of thinking. It all started in a rather theatrical moment, as I scooted
into a vacant seat on an airplane to peer out of the window. Rather than water, I was surprised to
see the snowy peaks of Greenland rolling underneath the wings of the
plane. For as far as I could see,
an expanse of white blanketed a rutted landscape. In this beautiful scene, I could pick out one small speck of
black. As we drew closer, this
speck formed into a lake for an ephemeral second before it escaped behind our
wings.
In this moment, a
thousand thoughts were in my head – I had been traveling alone for about 36
hours from the rural village of Mphangala, Malawi. I was anxious to touch ground in the United States. I hoped by then, I would be ready to
submit my application to medical school, and relieve myself of the bewildering
mix of thoughts that was swimming through my head. I was anxious to hug my parents, and to hold my puppy, for
one short night before I needed to pack my things again and move to a summer
internship far away.
Yet, in that
moment, my head was suddenly clear.
I felt the energy and the power of the good things I had built while
working and traveling. I had been able to work with some of the most driven and
enthusiastic “change-makers” on the planet, discussing solutions to large-scale
problems over a casual rice porridge breakfast. I wanted to cultivate this energy before it escaped from me. Instantly, I knew that I wanted to take
a larger role in the dialogue that I had just begun.
During the rest of
that eventful summer and the seasons that followed, I did a lot of thinking and
a lot of praying. Finally, I have
no reservations in saying that I am overjoyed to have accepted an invitation to
serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania. I will serve as a science teacher in a secondary school. I
will be able to defer admission to the University of Michigan Medical School
until 2017. I will learn to shake
my hips in long skirts, and live my days with the rhythm of the sun. I will eat
corn-meal with my hands, and probably parts of a goat that I won’t care to
share. More importantly, I hope to
learn to live and love in a community that will become my classroom. I hope to give the world a reason to
dance, and the journey begins here.
