The Foreign Service Call part 2
This is part 2 of a 3 part post on our journey to join the foreign service. If you want to read part 1 please go back and read it here.
About 3 weeks after taking the foreign service officer exam we were encouraged to discover that R passed. Not with flying colors or anything, but he passed. At this point, neither of us thought much of it. We knew there were so many more hoops to jump through & we wanted to keep our expectations low.
R scheduled a mandarin phone exam (which I don't think they do at that point in the process anymore) and passed it pretty easily. He submitted his personal narrative questionnaire in late July. This is 5 or so short (1300 characters) essays connecting his experiences and strengths to the foreign service. They value brevity, clarity in written communication and showing what you've done & what you've learned in the process. R used examples both from his experiences at NCR and from our time in East Asia. Along with the narratives the QEP (qualifications evaluation panel) reviewed his whole file (test scores, registration packet, narratives, resume, etc.).
In mid-September we got word that he passed this round as well and would be invited to DC to take the oral assessments. With busy holiday plans we scheduled a trip to the capitol the last week of January. Right before Christmas R was able to talk to a friend of a friend's who is a foreign service officer. He was very encouraging & the more we heard about the opportunities & lifestyle, the more excited we got about what might lay ahead. This was the point where we became truly invested in this dream.
Our DC trip was nerve-wracking. We stayed at a kinda gross hotel (by US standards) walking distance from the national mall. We couldn't sleep much before the Orals any way. I'm not sure what was worse- R slugging through the day-long interview/evaluation or me trying to kill 9 hours as I waited to find out if he passed. I remember watching several episodes of Parenthood streaming on netflix, journaling for a couple hours at starbucks, and then visiting the Newseum & the national galleries in hopes of distracting myself. Thankfully they told him right away that he passed. We could hardly believe it!
Another round of hurry-up-and-wait came as we completed our medical clearance and friends all over the country reported that the "men in black" had been to see them for R's security clearance. We knew this part of the process could take a couple months or the better part of a year.
More to come soon in part 3!
About 3 weeks after taking the foreign service officer exam we were encouraged to discover that R passed. Not with flying colors or anything, but he passed. At this point, neither of us thought much of it. We knew there were so many more hoops to jump through & we wanted to keep our expectations low.
R scheduled a mandarin phone exam (which I don't think they do at that point in the process anymore) and passed it pretty easily. He submitted his personal narrative questionnaire in late July. This is 5 or so short (1300 characters) essays connecting his experiences and strengths to the foreign service. They value brevity, clarity in written communication and showing what you've done & what you've learned in the process. R used examples both from his experiences at NCR and from our time in East Asia. Along with the narratives the QEP (qualifications evaluation panel) reviewed his whole file (test scores, registration packet, narratives, resume, etc.).
In mid-September we got word that he passed this round as well and would be invited to DC to take the oral assessments. With busy holiday plans we scheduled a trip to the capitol the last week of January. Right before Christmas R was able to talk to a friend of a friend's who is a foreign service officer. He was very encouraging & the more we heard about the opportunities & lifestyle, the more excited we got about what might lay ahead. This was the point where we became truly invested in this dream.
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| the day before the oral assessment on the mall |
Our DC trip was nerve-wracking. We stayed at a kinda gross hotel (by US standards) walking distance from the national mall. We couldn't sleep much before the Orals any way. I'm not sure what was worse- R slugging through the day-long interview/evaluation or me trying to kill 9 hours as I waited to find out if he passed. I remember watching several episodes of Parenthood streaming on netflix, journaling for a couple hours at starbucks, and then visiting the Newseum & the national galleries in hopes of distracting myself. Thankfully they told him right away that he passed. We could hardly believe it!
Another round of hurry-up-and-wait came as we completed our medical clearance and friends all over the country reported that the "men in black" had been to see them for R's security clearance. We knew this part of the process could take a couple months or the better part of a year.
More to come soon in part 3!
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