Sunday, January 9, 2011

A-100 Class: Step 1 to being a Foreign Service Officer

Ok, so granted I am writing this 6 months after the fact, but perhaps that is good perspective for those wanting to know what they will be getting themselves into and for friends/family who wonder what the excitement was all about.  Moms can only paint the picture they are being told at the time....!

We shoved everything that didn't fit into our UAB (read items that we needed for a temporary assignment as compared to the all the rest of the stuff that went into long-term storage), and put it in a UHaul behind the Murano.  Off to Texas to visit family.  Also to be able to claim Texas as our home state of residence and as our home leave location.  We can import the kids (now in college in LA and Colorado) to where ever we are at any given time and have a home base in Texas when we need it.

Rather maddening that last couple of days in Colorado trying to get everything done.  As mentioned before, Deidre laid the last tile an hour before we left.  Andrew (one of our sons) and a couple of friends finished the deck (minus a safety rail) and sister-in-law and nephew left to paint what we didn't get done.  The handyman had a long and costly list to finish up. The landscape needed minding.  You get the idea.  Long story short, the house got rented.  All done.

Land in DC after a 4 day trip dragging a UHaul trailer.  Despite our complaints, I am glad we did have all the stuff in there.  Clothes and kitchen items that we really needed.  A painting from Greece that I remember from living there that Mom had stuffed behind a door.  It now hangs in the apartment.  Kitchen items badly needed cause the "kitted out kitchen" from the corporate apartment people is basic and now lives in a box at the bottom of a closet.  NOT what a couple of cooks operate with....(we COOK!  Deidre fed 22 people at Thanksgiving....we adopted all those who were orphans).

A party hosted by our "sponsoring class" was the Sunday before A100 started the following day.  Awesome and exciting.  Nothing like your first "State Department" function.  Got to meet my mentor from the sponsoring class.  A delightful person who is now a good friend.  She is from Denver, adult children and trying to manage a separate (and invisible to her cause no one is talking) drama to get to her first post to Havana.  Deidre and I want to go visit when she gets there.  ....whenever that might be.

A100 was a surprise.  A class of over 90 officers ranging in age from 22 (really...) to 57 (also really...).  I was delighted to realize that I was not the oldest in the room.  We had a parade of Ambassadors, Directors, HR people, Insurance briefings, and lots and lots of conversation about how to manage your career.  An interesting briefing caught my attention about awards given to those who speak out and change the Foreign Service for the better.  It was a real "wow" experience.  I thought, 'terrific!  a culture that rewards those who think and want to change things for the better....'

So, immediately I start raising my hand and sending emails.  Now, I will grant you that I was sitting next to a guy (now good friend) who had the same sense of humor and view of the planet that I did.  We got separated if that tells you anything.  We both quickly realized that the reason you get an award for changing the Foreign Service is because it might be the only incentive you have.  Those awards are something between the Red Badge of Courage and a Purple Heart.

The response you get when you say things like..."wait, isn't there a way to do this better?  more efficiently?  stronger, faster, more informative?"  is not always well received.  It was my take-away from A100.  Choose your battles carefully to win the war.

And then, when your done and have your assignment, all the things they told you are true.  You take care of yourself and your career in the Foreign Service.  Not an issue for me, but is a real departure from the A100 attitude of herding the newbies around to keep everyone together.  Post graduation is a life filled with cliffs and you better hope that you were listening during A100 so you know where the cliffs are.  An uneducated officer can wind up on a black run when there are plenty of blue runs available (snow skiing metaphor).

And lastly, I learned that it is in my best interests to meet and befriend as many people as possible.  Something D and I enjoy anyway, so it wasn't a big transition.  The people that you are in class with may end up as your boss one day.  It is like a very large (only 7500 officers around the planet including DC at the moment) and extended family.  You may not like them all and it may be easier to love them from a distance (what family doesn't have those kind of family members...?).  But, eventually you build a network of 1 degree of separation.  Somebody you know and get along with knows the person who has a job open that you really, really, really want.  Those 1 degree of separation can be the make or break you getting your next job.  A Foreign Service Officer is responsible for bidding and landing all the future positions after the second one.  So year five and counting becomes a dialing and smiling process (with emails in-between).

Still love this job.  Love where I am (I am going to Tel Aviv and am in Hebrew language learning at the moment) and think this is going to be a great adventure.  I just have a jaded way of looking at the world.  More later....