I have had the same personal email account since 2006. During that time I attended two universities — each with their own email — and lived without internet for 27 months in a yurt in Mongolia. These events, coupled with my inability to unsubscribe from or read any newsletter whatsoever, eventually led to my amassing over 50,000 unread emails. It was almost a point of pride, until I received a notification informing me that my email account was nearly full. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
So I downloaded an app (Cleanfox, for fellow hoarders) and was able to purge over half. I have since been going through and methodically sorting, categorizing, deleting, and marking-as-read 21,879 emails. Surprisingly, I’ve found it pleasant to tour the cavalcade of job and university applications, email chains, correspondence with family now gone and friends out of touch, research papers, theses and, for our purposes, statements of intent.
This is the Statement of Intent that I submitted with my application to the US Peace Corps. I had obviously forgotten the words I wrote; but more harrowing is the feeling I’ve been forgetting the sentiment as well:
In thinking about my motivation toward Peace Corps service, I instantly think of two core ideals which were instilled in me from a very young age. The first is the concept of noblesse oblige. While we were far from any traditional definition of nobility, my mother explained to me that nobility instead is a certain way of thinking and acting. It is the moral obligation to help those less fortunate: be they materially, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually impoverished. “If you think you can help someone,” she told me, “then you should.”
Related to this is a quote I remember vividly from my grandfather, who would boldly claim that he had found the cure for sadness. This, coupled with his proclivity toward verse, became the oft repeated, “If you’re ever feeling low, do something nice for someone you don’t know.” Years later, I would find this same sentiment in Lev Tolstoy’s Cossacks, “Happiness lies in living for others. That is evident. The desire for happiness is innate in every man; therefore it is legitimate. When trying to satisfy it selfishly – that is, by seeking for oneself riches, fame, comforts or love – it may happen that circumstances arise which make it impossible to satisfy these desires. It follows that it is these desires that areillegitimate, but not the need for happiness.”
I firmly believe that the satisfaction of the moral compulsion toward good – that is, in actively engaging in the pursuit of others’ physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development – results in the deep, abiding happiness of fulfillment in one’s work. This statement becomes problematized, however, when it is directed toward those of different cultural, historical, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds. In my motivation to do good, I understand that I will be expected to first learn about new cultures, languages, modes of thought, and people, and am excited about the opportunity to do so.
I look forward to the opportunity to apply my various skills in the most productive way possible. I have devoted my intellectual life to dialogue with another culture. I have experience teaching, two years’ experience in construction, and a combined five years’ in administration and management. I know what it means to work hard, and how to push myself to my utmost limits physically, mentally, and emotionally. I realize that I will face many challenges during my service, and am excited about the opportunity to meet these challenges. It would be a great honor to have the chance to apply my knowledge and skills in Peace Corps service to dialogue with another culture in its own language, find what it most cherishes, and through education and community development, help those desires to be realized.
There is an inherent antagonism between the ideal and the actual. We all get into teaching with the best of intentions: helping, molding, encouraging, preparing; but the practical always creeps insidious: efficient, cost-effective, easy, quickly-achievable.
I have been struggling with this antagonism for quite a while, and as a result am struggling with a conclusion for this article — there is no easy platitude I can think of that puts this in a nice box. Honestly I could use some help (in more ways than one, but I’ll stay on-topic): how do you juggle the idealism that made you choose teaching as a profession with the practicalities of day-to-day teaching?
Paul Forehand
Paul Forehand currently teaches ELA and Russian Language in the Kingman Unified School District. He earned his undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University in Russian Language and Literature in 2008 and, after a four-year experiment in making money and being miserable, subsequently fled back to The Ivory Tower. In 2014, Paul earned his Master’s degree in (deep breath) Russian, East-European, and Eurasian Studies with an emphasis in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Oregon. Funding for his education was tied to teaching within the Humanities and Russian Departments which, to the surprise of most including himself, he had a knack for. From 2015-2017 Paul taught Russian and English as Foreign Languages in a rural Mongolian town as a representative of the US Peace Corps. The time spent there twisted him into the man he is today, and encouraged him to always pursue ways of applying his skill set – such as it is – where he is most needed.