Family members and friends were ecstatic to welcome me home. However, it felt like I left something in the United Kingdom. Some call it the travel bug, others may dismiss it as a false sense of adventure. I have come to think of it as a natural part of me. This was a sense of adventure, a sense of facing the horizon and always being on the brink of something new. At Rider University, where I went to school in New Jersey, I was a political science major. Originally, I thought that I would use to it to practice law like all of the politicians and lawyers I was meeting at dinners and events. After studying abroad, this feeling changed. Now, I wanted to combine my spirit of service with my sense of adventure. Foreign service has since been my calling.
This leads us to the present day, well almost. After college, I spent two years in AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is a national service organization that does a fantastic job at supporting young people who want to make a change in the world. In my first year, I was a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Corps member and helped FEMA and the Red Cross respond to natural disasters around the United States. In my second year, I was a VISTA leader with a nonprofit organization called Cities of Service. Their goal is to solve difficult public problems by asking people to help make a change. These years were very meaningful to me on a moral level. They improved my work ethic and made me more professional.
Now we reach the present! After serving my country with AmeriCorps for two years, I began to look out. I had seen a world that needed a lot of cooperation and shared understanding. It was because of this, and with the mission to join the foreign service one day, that I applied to be a Princeton in Asia Fellow.
