Can You Apply to Americorps Again if Not Accepted
Commodity Author:
Ariel Allen, Staff & CAC AmeriCorps Alum 2014-2015
With the approaching new year, in the thick of the cornball post-Christmas bubble, I started digging through my old emails and began piecing together a story of my humbling by few years. Below is a compilation of excerpts from my actual emails that will not only guide you lot, just has also helped me relive the painful rejections and ultimate triumph that perfectly captures my AmeriCorps journeying. Hopefully you can place with both my self- deprecating grief and eventual success equally office of your own narrative. For your viewing pleasance:
It all started with an email:
Subject: GoEco Project Info: Costa rica Seaturtle Conservation
06/16/11 at three:01 AM
Hi Ariel,
I am pleased to confirm your placement in Republic of costa rica!
Projection name: Ocean Turtle Conservation + Castilian week
Organisation: Amistad Institute
Location: To Exist Adamant- you volition receive an info canvass with total details about your specific beach about a month prior to your placement
…..
Little did I know, this unceremonious acceptance email dorsum from 2011 would eventually shape my burgeoning futurity career of environmental service. I'grand certain I would take never believed you if y'all said it would take
me from the beaches of Costa rica and eventually land me Knoxville, Tennessee. When I received this electronic mail I thought surely this was just the beginning and would exist followed past a parade of acceptances and job offers afterwards graduation. Optimistic, a bit naïve, and rejection far from my mind, I headed back after that summer to finish upwards college.
Long afterwards the summertime of hard work and beatific existence working side past side with some of the best people I've e'er met (I'm looking at Yous Iain Ferguson), I found myself back in school, replacing the passion for the environment for another in sociology and soon earned my degree. But if you were anything like me, after graduating, the showering of job offers that had been promised to you by advisors, professors, and parents as a advantage and sole purpose for your collegiate efforts never came. You instead suffered blow after blow to your short lived post-graduate-swollen- self-esteem due to the absolute lack of interest in your resume in the chore marketplace. Similar and so many other graduates, I walked across that green grass of a stage thinking a job would exist begging for me on the other side. Instead, the proverbial "other side" offered me my old loftier schoolhouse job which I eagerly accustomed in an act of desperation. I spent the next summer, fall and winter working and applying for promising positions that my sociology degree would qualify me for. After an impressive collection of rejection letters, emails, phone calls and non-responses, 2 things became abundantly clear:
- "Entry" level positions that still crave 2 years of feel is the most frustrating oxymoronic concept (how are you ever supposed to proceeds the oft repeated requirement of 2 years experience if NO ONE Volition EVER HIRE YOU TO Begin WITH?)
- If I ever wanted to become my career started, I was going to have to pursue it from a unlike bending.
That spring, fueled past one part self-conclusion and 3 parts antipathy for the gainfully employed, I enrolled in graduate school thinking that a masters degree would surely open up more than opportunities down the road. In the meantime, I still applied for jobs- I fifty-fifty submitted an application to an AmeriCorps VISTA program in my local surface area:
Subject: VISTA Project Coordinator Position
x/02/13 at 7:12 PM
Good Afternoon,
Nosotros appreciate your interest in CHILDREN AT Adventure and the AmeriCorps VISTA project coordinator position for which you applied. After reviewing the applications nosotros received, yours was not selected for further consideration. Other candidates more closely fit the position's requirements.
The option committee appreciates the time you invested in your awarding. Nosotros encourage you lot to utilize for posted and advertised positions in our company, for which you qualify, in the future.
We wish you every personal and professional success with your job search and in the future. Thank you, over again, for your involvement in our company.
For me, this was the all too familiar "we capeesh your interest but…." email. I must accept received it dozens of times. "We wish you every personal and professional person success with your job search and in the future". Were they mocking me? I didn't need their smug well wishes- I needed a job. Defeated for the last time, I began to accept my underemployment purgatory.
Months past. I was nearly finished with my commencement grueling semester of graduate schoolhouse and fulltime underemployment. With finals chop-chop approaching, another email pinged my inbox:
Bailiwick: AmeriCorps Online System – Listing Match From Sponsor
04/17/fourteen at ten:19 AM
Dear Ariel Rose Allen:
Thank you very much for your involvement in AmeriCorps. After reviewing your profile, nosotros have decided that you possess the necessary qualifications for the * CAC AmeriCorps 2014-15 project. If y'all would like to receive more information about this project opportunity, delight click the link provided beneath. We greatly encourage you to apply for this position. If you would like to apply, only login to your business relationship and search for the listing.
Somehow in the AmeriCorps online stratosphere, in which I had submitted that ill-fated resume to months prior, had been reviewed and deemed a match for a different plan. A true miracle. I eagerly clicked the link. CAC Americorps. Knoxville, Tennessee. I googled. "Our focus at CAC AmeriCorps is Ecology Service," I read. Did my one summertime working at the conservation lab actually authorize me for environmental service piece of work this programme offered? Putting studying for finals on hold, I took the chance and just practical.
A month later, another e-mail. This one was different. I stared at it, rereading it in disbelief- they wanted to prepare up an interview. WITH ME. A few more than days passed, the phone rang and it was time for my interview. After 45 minutes, nerves soon dissolved into excitement. I apace realized my waning interest in sociology and graduate school was no lucifer for what CAC AmeriCorps could offering me. It would give me the opportunity to refuel my almost forgotten passion I had discovered while working along the beaches in Costa Rica many summers before. To my amazement, I made the get-go round interview cut. They so passed forth my application to i of their sites at Proceed Knoxville Cute:
Discipline: AmeriCorps Position
05/13/14 at 4:37 PM
Ms. Allen,
XXXX XXXX forwarded me your application and I am extremely interested in talking with you about coming to work at Keep Knoxville Cute. When is a good time for me to call you?
This was the very starting time time I ever had a potential employer apply the words "extremely" and "interested in y'all" in consecutive society in response to my application. The second circular interview finished up and I could hardly go along still from the mounting excitement. A few days afterwards, I received what I had spent the terminal year waiting for:
Subject: Welcome to 2014-2015 CAC AmeriCorps Program!
05/nineteen/14 at 3:11 PM
Miss Ariel Allen,
On behalf of the Knoxville-Knox County Community Activity Committee AmeriCorps Programme we would like to welcome you to the 2014-2015 CAC AmeriCorps Go along Knoxville Beautiful position! We are excited about a great year of service learning and positively impacting the surroundings within the local community you will serve. We expect forward to a great year and promise you have an awesome experience with our Corps!
Was my purgatorial existence finally ending? Aye, I had been 
absolved of my underemployment sins and been granted passage into a brighter future. By the end of summer, I had moved to Knoxville and eagerly waited for the year to get started. I had no idea what information technology would bring, but I knew information technology would atomic number 82 me on the "two years experience" path. What I didn't know is that it would put me in contact with so many wonderful, inspiring people also equally bring invaluable experiences and opportunities my way. Truly, it has changed my life and has been one of the all-time decisions I've e'er made- but I'll write about that another time.
After an incredible year serving at Keep Knoxville Beautiful, my time there was winding downwardly. During my last few months and almost a yr to engagement since my own credence into the program, I received this email:
Subject: Employment/ Volunteer Opportunities
05/04/15
To whom information technology may business organization,
My proper name is Christine Doka and I volition be graduating from the University of Southward Carolina with a BA in Environmental Studies and with leadership distinction in Professional person and Civic Engagement this May. I have a strong passion for sustainability and environmental education, and believe that there is no alternative for a sustainable time to come than going green. …
I am originally from the Knoxville area, and am excited to move back and dive into any and all 'light-green' initiatives that are taking place! If you believe that my skills could be valuable to your organization, please do not hesitate to contact me via telephone or email. I have attached my resume if you lot are interested in viewing that as well. I promise to hear from you shortly!
I had written that e-mail so many times to prospective employers. I felt her passion and relived the agonizing experience of waiting for a response that was ultimately a rejection- and now I was about to write her one:
Subject: RE: Employment/Volunteer Opportunities
05/06/15
Hello Christine!
Cheers so much for your interest in Go along Knoxville Cute! We are really transitioning staff right now. We are losing our Executive Director and our only other staff member (me) is really through AmeriCorps. If you lot are not familiar, AmeriCorps is substantially a domestic PeaceCorps. Information technology has been as absolutely transformative feel for me and ane I highly recommend. Our twoscore member Corps specifically focuses on environmental sustainability here in East TN and places you at a diversity of different positions beyond Knoxville with 1 of those positions being hither at Keep Knoxville Cute. If you are moving dorsum to the Knoxville area and are looking for a rewarding experience, I would definitely check out the CAC AmeriCorps program to larn more information. Now, this is essentially a twelvemonth long volunteer position simply with HUGE perks. In commutation for your year of service, AmeriCorps offers yous a small biweekly living stipend and a $five,000 educational award to pay back students loans or to apply towards time to come schooling. You also become part of a national programme and volition be recognized throughout the community accordingly and let me tell ya, Knoxville has huge pride in their AmeriCorps members. I think they are notwithstanding accepting applications if this is something y'all are interested in.
I'thousand not sure if this is exactly the information you were looking for but I read your resume and I thought you'd exist a keen fit for the AmeriCorps program. Yous tin can also phone call me directly if you have whatever more questions.
Hope this helps!
Ariel
Unbeknownst to me, this rejection would soon start her ain AmeriCorps journey. The wonderful Christine Doka at present serves in the 2015-2016 CAC AmeriCorps program with the Aslan Foundation- a direct result of the email I sent her encouraging her to use. And so many hours were spent blasphemous the people who rejected my application, ignored my resume and offered me luck instead of employment. Simply knowing what I do now, maybe I should give thanks them. Their rejection has led me hither and after my rejection led Christine here.
So, I encourage the rejected to apply. At present as staff at CAC AmeriCorps I can earnestly tell you: we see you, we recognize you, we were you. Don't allow the rejections of the past dissuade you from pursing your future.
Who knows? Mayhap y'all'll even receive an acceptance email from me.
PS- if you are Iain and reading this, give thanks you for helping me celebrate the birthday I never knew I had! Sea Turtle.
This weblog mail service is a collection of personal reflections and expressions. All opinions represented are those of the author and practise non stand for the official opinion or views of the Knoxville – Knox Canton Community Action group, CAC AmeriCorps or whatsoever other party referenced.
Source: https://cacamericorps.org/2015/12/31/an-americorps-journey-through-emails-a-story-of-rejection/