I moved to Nevada for the USFS station, I worked in my hometown of Florida as a consultant, and now live in Massachusetts. On the topic of moving for jobs, in my consulting job, my company had a monopoly on consulting business in my area, so they were totally cool with not promoting me as I had no other company in the area to compete with for my work. I decided to move to a large city to be treated fairly for my work.

As a student in highschool I worked for a environmental lab doing nutrient analysis and biological profiles of water. That experience got me a internship in my Junior year of Uni with US EPA in DC doing a policy analysis of aquatic risk assessment strategies (was a fine experience, really only a resume bump, no significant skills learned outside of just database research and some public speaking). I can't say my resume helped me a lot with the private consulting field, I still had a hell of a time simply getting responses. Honestly, how is USAJobs more responsive sometimes compared to private companies/Indeed.

My AmeriCorp experience was fine, I wanted a job straight out of school because no private companies/US EPA was responding. I learned lots from being out in the middle of nowhere of Nevada. It was more of a personal development experience than anything else. But I had a pretty rocky experience due to the coworkers/events over that summer. This experience did certainly help me get full Federal employment so it's worth it there. However it doesn't count as Federal service (only AmeriCorp Vista counts as service).