I was working on my DOS the other day, and I felt really overwhelmed. I thought back to a time during PST when we were forced to look at the DOS examples of two very exemplary volunteers. At the time, I remember thinking that I could totally do all of the things these other volunteers had done, and then some. Being the secret competitor that I am, I looked at their DOS statements as a challenge, rather than as an inspiration for what my service could look like.
In case you don’t know, a DOS is basically a summary of all of the things that you have done during your service—this means the projects you worked on and completed, the grants you wrote, and the opportunities you saw to make your community better. Your DOS is a record that the Country Director and other members of staff can reference to when they talk about you to employers. It is the thing that you put in your applications (especially for government jobs) that says, “look at me, I’m amazing.”
But it isn’t the truth. It’s not a lie, either. It’s just a fragment of all of things that made your service what it was.
It doesn’t talk about the challenges you faced in your community.
It doesn’t say, “This is how I was resilient. This is how I overcame.”
It definitely makes no mention of all of the traumatizing bathrooms incidents.
The DOS talks about all of the hours you taught (or didn’t teach) and all of the mandatory Peace Corps related conferences that you couldn’t get out of (and didn’t want to when it meant not going to school). While the DOS really just focuses on all of the positive aspects of your service, it also ignores completely ordinary moments that made you stay.
It doesn’t talk about your student in Fourth Form that always greets you with “What’s up?!” instead of “HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?”
It doesn’t even let you glimpse into all of the conversations that took place over coffee and cake.
It doesn’t allude to the cups you had read, or the moments when you actually understood what was going on.
In summation, your DOS isn’t your service.
And while my DOS definitely surpasses the DOS statements of those exemplary volunteers, it’s not a true reflection of what my service has been. In my statement, you don’t see all of the clubs that failed to do anything more than start, or the times I had to walk out of class to keep myself sane. It doesn’t show all of the deep conversations that took place with my CP over soup and tea. It doesn’t even let you glimpse into moments that started off as uncomfortable, then morphed into something great. It doesn’t even begin to cover all of the fears that were overcome, and all of the things I didn’t even know I was afraid of. It definitely doesn’t talk about language.
While my DOS looks remarkably glossy compared to my actual service, and it definitely alludes to how ambitious and driven I really am, it doesn’t even come close to explaining how amazing, complicated, hard, overwhelming, ordinary, and extraordinary my service really has been to me.
It doesn’t even begin to explain that my service was mine.
The Brave Risk 