Peter M.

1. What were your primary responsibilities during service?

My primary responsibilities included teaching English at every level, from lower school through high school. I would support our two English teachers in making lesson plans and then help them with classroom activities, in particular verbal communication. Outside of school, I hosted English clubs and was consistently on the winning basketball team and losing chess team during school events.

2. What projects did you collaborate on with your community?

There were a few projects that I worked on with my community, mostly with my school. Through a Peace Corps Partnership Program grant, I was able to support updates and enhancements to our school’s city museum. I was lucky to have access to a computer lab for English class, although when I started there were very limited English learning applications. I helped find and test out free English applications that would engage kids at the various levels of language.

3. How did Peace Corps service influence your professional path?

As my service neared its end, I applied for graduate school with a very specific purpose gleaned from my time at site: I realized over the two years that I truly did not understand how many of our basic civil services work. I have long been a more technical person and during the lulls in service I had taught myself how to program, so I chose to focus on innovation and technology policy.

There were soft skills that I learned in the Peace Corps that have also proven to be invaluable both as a graduate student and then in my career. Specifically, my tolerance for and ease of handling wildly chaotic and higher-pressure situations grew immeasurably. I found my communication skills and public speaking improved markedly, since toasts and spur-of-the-moment public speaking opportunities were very abundant during service.

4. How do you use skills honed during service in your current job?

I rely incredibly heavily on many of the soft and hard skills that I honed during Peace Corps in my day-to-day life. While I know learning to code isn’t a typical skill many will acquire during service, as a software developer I would not have the job I have now without that. But I definitely use the soft skills I learned: confidence, communication, and an understanding that things will go sideways and that is okay, you just have to prepare as best you can and trust yourself to navigate whatever comes your way. These are skills you have to learn by experience, which thankfully come in abundance in the Peace Corps. As a manager, I find patience and an appropriate balance of empathy and honesty to be requirements, and I truly believe the Peace Corps helped me grow in those ways.

5. How have you helped those at home understand the value of Peace Corps service and communities abroad?

My service in Ukraine provided me ample opportunity to help my family, friends, and even some strangers understand not only the value of what our country, and Peace Corps specifically, can offer the world, but the value of families they may never meet, communities they may never see, and a country they may now have only heard of in the context of their fight for existence. I have tried to help bring the people in a distant war to life by telling stories of my time in the Peace Corps. I have made food for my family and friends from our Peace Corps cookbook and told them about traditions and superstitions. I teach them words and phrases that I found humorous or endearing. Mostly, these occur in social engagements, over dinners, and at random events, but I have also encouraged friends and family to go to talks and showings of films and events celebrating Ukrainian culture.

6. What Peace Corps benefits have been useful to you?

The readjustment allowance was instrumental in helping me land on my feet coming back from Peace Corps service. While I did not end up using my noncompetitive eligibility (NCE), it did increase the scope of jobs that I considered applying for. Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) networks across the United States have provided me with many social and professional networking opportunities.

7. How have you remained involved with the Peace Corps community following service?

In Austin, I was a member of the wonderful Heart of Texas Peace Corps Association and in Washington, D.C., I am part of the RPCV/W network. I have kept in touch with many volunteers from my cohort and have been able to join other Ukraine RPCVs at local events. My wife is also a Peace Corps Volunteer from Ukraine and we both have a strong affinity and love of our Peace Corps communities. I keep in touch with my host family and with some of my former students.

8. What tips do you have for Volunteers returning from service?

Leverage your RPCV networks, make an effort to continue speaking the language you learned during service, be intentional about the third goal of the Peace Corps, and understand that readjustment can take time. Give yourself some grace.

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