Stories
Stories
Whit Sears (MBA 1959)
Born in Kansas, Whit Sears graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, before attending HBS. He and his wife, DD, are currently serving as Peace Corps volunteers in Thailand, where they teach English and mentor local teachers.
As an undergraduate, I changed my major from math to business after my father-in-law pointedly mentioned the difference in earning power between teaching and business. Although I wasnt especially interested in a business career, when I secured admission to HBS, I could not pass up the opportunity. Probably due to a lack of enthusiasm, however, I didnt work as hard or get as much out of HBS as I might have. Nonetheless, HBS was a good experience for me: The community was solid, the teaching superb, and the cases challenging. I still use class discussion whenever I can in teaching.
Despite many rewarding jobs over the years, my career never had any real direction until after my divorce and remarriage in 1970. I finally found my stride working in internal audit, and after much moving around both domestically and overseas, I settled down in northeastern Illinois.
My wife, DD, and I began foster care when our youngest was 15. We first provided emergency short-term placement for troubled teens in McHenry County. Before we were licensed, the only options the county had for teens who could not go home were sending them to jail or a hospital. Over seven years, we took in more than 100 placements, both emergency and longer term. Several of our longer-term kids have returned to say thank you. We still consider one boy now a man part of the family.
In 2001, DD and I started thinking about the Peace Corps. Our children were grown, and we were free to do what we both had thought about for some time. We completed the application this took over six months and were assigned to Thailand. In April 2003, after ten weeks of training, we arrived at our site, Phitsanulok, a city of about 90,000 known as The Gateway to the North. Our principal task here is to mentor primary- and secondary-school teachers. Our command of the Thai language is a work in progress but fortunately most of the teachers we work with speak passable English they are, after all, English teachers. The schools we work with are run by the city and are reasonably modern, though they lack much of what we take for granted.
Each of our schools is associated with a wat. Although built around a temple and housing a contingent of monks, each wat also serves as a social and community center and frequently hosts market days and carnivals. Its hard to convey the pervasive role of monks in Thai society. Every Thai male is expected to spend some time as a monk before he marries. This is, of course, in addition to those who dedicate their lives. Respect for monks is real and nearly universal. DD and I help teach English to three classes of young monks (junior-high age).
DD and I live in a modern Thai house. We have a master bedroom with a balcony, two other bedrooms, two baths, a garden with fruit trees, and fish swimming in several ceramic urns. Its like being newlyweds again. The food is delicious and spicy; water for drinking must be filtered and boiled. Electricity is pretty reliable; we have fans but not air-conditioning. In the cool season, the temperature drops to ninety degrees by evening. DD and I make about $600 a month between us and pay $90 in rent. We have bicycles that we ride to work and shopping. One of our schools is about six miles away, so we occasionally take a bus during the rainy season. The fare is thirteen cents.
Weve found the Thai people to be friendly and cooperative, although there are, of course, misunderstandings arising from language difficulties. Both our co-teachers and the man in the street seem to appreciate our being here. They are not surprised to see us; the Peace Corps has been in Thailand for forty years.
Our Peace Corps service will end on March 31, 2005. After that, we plan to stay home for a while and meet our three new grandchildren. Another Peace Corps tour is not out of the question, nor is returning to Thailand to teach for a year or two. I wanted to be a teacher it just took me seventy years to get there.
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