Steven Gallon

I went to Korea as a twenty-one year old newlywed and recent college graduate. My work experience had been more physical than mental, yet I was expected to be a teacher and change agent in a culture quite different from the one of my upbringing. I found my learning curve had to be steep. Peace Corps training provided me with little more than minimal instruction in a difficult language and almost no insight into the practicalities of daily life in Korea. Plus, I was experimenting for the first time with a live-in partner. It was a true adventure.

During the course of two years, I learned a lot, grew in maturity, developed some skills I didn't know I had, and started on a career path in which I often found myself falling back upon the lessons of my Peace Corps years. To say that being a PCV is "the toughest job you'll ever love" doesn't nearly describe the impact of those few years on the rest of my life. In my memoir, Finding Our Way, I try to give the reader an inkling of what that experience was like.

In the years following Peace Corps I earned graduate degrees in counseling psychology and had a career that spanned several different settings, from direct clinical care, to consulting, to training other healthcare workers. Those assignments took me places I couldn't imagine during my time in Korea. I had opportunities to consult and teach in Europe, Asia, the US-affiliated Pacific Islands, and multiple places across the US. It was my introduction to living and working overseas that provided the lessons and backdrop that helped me be successful during my forty year career in behavioral health.

Along the way, I would say that our extended "honeymoon" in Korea was a great way to start a lifelong partnership with a woman who I still refer to as my bride. We parented two wonderful kids and now admire five grandchildren as they all enter adulthood and begin to establish their own lives. To say I've been blessed would be a gross understatement. Writing a memoir of our life in Korea helped me once again appreciate the gift Peace Corps afforded us in becoming PCVs.