Many, Many Flag Days: A Year in Foreign Service Orientation

 Two hundred and thirty new State Department employees sit uncomfortably close together in a large auditorium. They're assembled in three large blocks of chairs, separated by two aisles leading to a low stage in front of the room. Seated behind them, also snug in rows of chairs, are two guests for each new hire. In total, that's nearly 700 people dressed in graduation-level formality. It's August in northern Virginia and some are cooling themselves with American flag-themed paper fans as the auditorium's A/C strains to keep the room habitable. Or it's February and all arrived in heavy coats and winter shoes. Or for the fortunate, it's May or October and they're comfortable. Either way, the invited spouses, siblings, parents, children, and friends wouldn't miss witnessing this day when new Foreign Service professionals have their misty horizons, full of possibilities, dreams, and what-ifs, come into undeniably clear focus. By extension for many of the guests, their own lives are about to take the same turn. Seated or standing along the edges of the auditorium are Orientation staff - people like me who have been shepherding the students over the past five weeks through the rigorous Foreign Service Orientation course. Also lining the walls are the students' Career Development Officers (CDOs) who have acted as agents for the class members. Over the first ten days of Orientation, the CDOs met with their clients as they took on the task of aligning available assignments and Department staffing priorities, with career wish lists, must-haves, and red lines. 

Today, Flag Day, all will be revealed. 

Photo grabbed from a FS professional's blog (thank you) written in 2010. We still use these flag holders 14 years later and lemme tell you it's a LOT harder to keep them from spilling onto the floor than one would imagine. 

After a Department official and the selected class speaker deliver their remarks and step down from the podium, the main event begins. The announcer, someone with the unenviable job of reading out over 200 assignments in clear, measured voice, enunciating Ouagadougou, Podgorica and Antananarivo as easily as Toronto, adjusts the microphone and begins. The auditorium falls silent save for a baby's squawk from the back of the room - it's okay, it's a family affair. The students, some with ears pricked towards the speaker and eyes focused forward, some dropping their gaze to their laps to blur their surroundings or perhaps brace for impact, wait for their names to be called. The country flags, city names, and job titles are projected one by one onto a huge screen at the front of the auditorium. One Orientation staff member stands at a lectern to the side of the stage, controlling the painstakingly created presentation. With a steady, but undoubtedly cramping index finger, they advance the presentation in synch with the announcements, four clicks per assignment, 920 clicks total.

A flag appears on the screen - some easier to recognize than others - and a mixture of oohs and ahhs rises from the audience. 

Tirana, Albania

Human Resources Officer

(Name)

A student from somewhere in the middle row jumps to their feet and makes their way to the center aisle, stepping across seated colleagues, usually smiling, but just as often blank-faced as their bodies react with movement before their brains process the meaning of it all. They arrive at the front of the auditorium where they receive the tiny flag of their assigned country or U.S. state, shake hands, pause only a beat for the official photographer, and then make their way to the back of the auditorium past staff lining the walls, accepting hugs, high-fives, congratulations, or just smiles and claps. Sometimes the CDOs get passing thank yous and little flag waves from those assigned to "high bid" (favorite) postings, but more often the students cruise by, just trying to remember where they're supposed to walk. Behind their dazed looks their minds are reconfiguring their lives as they knew them just minutes before. Some turn the wrong way in the auditorium, and with a quick but gentle hand on a shoulder, Orientation staff redirect them to the right track. At the back of the auditorium they pose for more photos with their class mentors in front of a formal backdrop of U.S. and State Department flags. The class mentors, senior Department officers, are excited to be at this culminating event after having shared their time, personal and professional greatest hits, and career guidance with the class over the preceding weeks. The adrenaline subsiding, they then return one by one to their seats to cheer on their classmates. 

Some consider Flag Day to be Foreign Service hazing given the high stakes and potential for public expressions of joy, disappointment, or shock - both positive and negative - in front of over 600 people. To others, Flag Days are career highlights. Either way, even years or decades later, everyone can tell a Flag Day story, whether it was theirs or another's.  

For me, each Flag Day refuels my enthusiasm for my work. The ceremonies water my internal daisy, its petals drooping and leaves wilted by the minutiae, deadlines, bureaucracy, and continual decision making and second-guessing to get things just-right that occupy my days. There are times when all I want to be responsible for is myself; my schedule driven purely by personal inspiration, the results judged only by me. Thirteen years into this career with retirement teasing me from the horizon, these times of wishing I could just go weed a pea patch all day are hitting me with increasing frequency. 

But then I turn my focus back to those students in that auditorium. I rewind the film a bit more to the start of my time working in Orientation. A montage of faces and names scrolls across the screen in my mind, a year's worth of new colleagues and friends. Beyond the visual, I also hear their voices and replay snippets of personal stories: their motivations and aspirations for this career and their earnest questions and commentary about the road ahead we all shared in the classroom. More than just watering my daisy, the time spent absorbing our newest colleagues' energy, enthusiasm, capability, and genuine optimism for this career revives that flower so that each morning I can once again stuff my lunch bag, tea thermos, laptop (and charger!), and spiral-bound to-do lists into a few shoulder bags and head out the door to face another day. After all, I've got my own bidding and assignment season coming soon and with it the inevitable spinning of the giant wheel of possibilities. Feeling animated, I conclude that heck, one more overseas tour will be exciting, just think of the adventures we'll have and stories we'll tell. I step outside; the mornings are still fresh; the birds singing their little hearts out in the trees and the magnolias so scented I'm certain I've walked into the wake of a perfumed woman. It's a beautiful day.