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.

A Change of Plans: Breaking an Assignment and Finding Another

When we last left off, the four of us were looking forward to our next assignment to Lusaka, Zambia where I'd be Consular Chief in a small section. Okay, truth be told, the non-Tabbies didn't yet know they were ever going to leave their beloved Salvadoran house garden after four years, but at least my husband and I were enthusiastic about the idea. I'd tucked three Zambian guide books (travel, culture, and birds) under the Christmas tree for him. We'd gotten congratulatory messages from friends who knew the country and were excited for us to get to know it, and others who started planning their Zambian vacations. We began receiving welcoming messages from the embassy and questionaires about our housing preferences. We were imagining life in our new city, and were considering options for buying a right-hand drive car. Essentially, it was all systems go on this new destination. I began to negotiate my transfer timing between what's referred to as the "losing post" (San Salvador) and the "gaining post" (Lusaka) for later this summer.  

Meanwhile, something was not sitting well with me. I heard myself dropping bits of unidentified, nagging anxieties into conversations, making light of my concerns by expressing them with a chuckle. I'd gauge my husband's, friends' or coworkers' reactions to see if my fears were off base. I secretly wished someone would say what I was too afraid to say myself: "You don't HAVE to go there, you know."  I considered the odds of some sort of divine intervention making the decision for me.

Was it Zambia? No! We weren't trepidatious about living there at all. We were excited to meet the people and explore the country and region. 

Was it the job? Not entirely. I had only heard the best about the post and people in charge. Great ambassador - I was told I would be very fortunate to work with him and a friend thought we'd get along well. From my interview, I really enjoyed the Deputy Chief of Mission who would be my direct boss and was looking forward to stepping up and being part of the Country Team. 

So why the turning stomach? 

It started almost immediately after receiving my handshake when I began in earnest to research the travel to post. Negotiating the timing of our departure and arrival was a bit contentious, as is often the case, with each post wanting me to stay the longest and arrive the soonest. Balancing this meant most likely we'd be flying from our west coast home leave location to Zambia with the cats, an itinerary of three flights, two of them overnight, and close to 30 hours of travel. I began to imagine the worst case scenario for them during transit and the worst case began to snowball. 

Then came the realization that should I need to come back home for whatever reason, I'd have to repeat that trip (sans cats) all the while juggling my responsibilities as Consular Chief with only one other American officer in the section to handle affairs in my absence. The belt began tightening around my waist. 

Yes, I was getting to the heart of my qualms now. 

We lost my/our mother a year ago very suddenly, but fortunately I was able to get north to see my family with relative ease. When my father died a few years back, we were in DC which made it even easier to catch a direct flight to the west coast a few times over his last six months. Being only a few time zones away made for easy communication, too. In addition, there were two other serious family health issues where forces were mustered to help out. Being in El Salvador left much of this burden to the geographically closest siblings, something I regret. And let's face it, none of us is getting any younger and the chances of wanting or needing to be physically present is only growing. This simply wasn't the time to be half a world away in a stressful, highly responsible position. 

But I'd actively bid on and accepted the position, so now I had to make the best of it, right? In an effort to imagine what life was going to feel like in my new role, I started quizzing friends who are Consular Chiefs in similar-sized sections. "What is the stress load like? Do you have time for family? Are you enjoying the work?" All were kindly supportive, as good friends are, giving me assurances of "Of course you can do it!" I began to psych myself up with a chorus from The Little Engine That Could. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! All the while, their assurances didn't settle my nerves because I hadn't been asking the right questions. I didn't need an answer to CAN I do it, but do I WANT to do it? Or really, do I NEED to do it? That answer could come only from me. 

So over one weekend, after the drumbeats of my dropped hints were getting louder and louder, I just said the unthinkable out loud: I need to break my assignment to Lusaka. No sooner had I declared this than my husband said he'd support my decision 100 percent. I tried to back-pedal: but our plans, but the guide books, but another adventure in the chapter of me and you, but, but, but... He held firm in his support. 

The instant we agreed, it felt as if I had taken off the tighest, most binding pair of pants and shoes you could imagine. Like that moment when you come home from work, kick off the pinchy shoes, strip naked just steps inside the front door, and pull on your favorite sweats. That's how releived I felt at making this decision. 

Now, it's important to add some context about breaking an assignment.  First, as Foreign Service employees we swear from day one to be worldwide available. To uphold this, there is a strong culture of service, pride in taking one for the team, buck up buttercup this is what we all go through, not everyone can go to Paris, you know...  I don't point this out as an intrinsically derogatory feature of the profession, mind you. We need to be made of sterner stuff to serve around the world, and the harder the post, the greater the (financial) reward. Further, I pride myself on NOT being a whiner. My husband and I adapt well to local environments. We are not motivated by doing just what increases our comfort, or trying to export an American lifestyle to Timbuktu. It's just not us. Plus, keeping committments is a really, really big deal to me. I will put myself out first, before doing so to others.  

Therefore putting myself first took a lot, first to accept and then to enact. I faced the doubts of "Am I not up to the work?" or "We all have had hard times - that's just life, get over it" and the shame of not being willing to simply soldier on. Perhaps these are only my own whispering demons, but they are likely shared by others as well.  

Then I had another realization which has come into sharper focus with each passing decade. Simply put, why accelerate my car towards a destination I don't necessarily want to reach? My new assignment would be a big career step and would likely lead to promotion. But was that really the desired destination? What exactly is the exchange rate for limiting my ability to take care of myself and family, and stressing the hell out of our cats? As is, my career has a maximum life expectancy of eight more years before mandatory retirement. In the end, being mentally and geographically available to those I love is so much more important than the nursing-home bragging rights of saying "...and I retired from the Foreign Service as a mid-level manager..." to a big round of eye rolls from the audience. 

So that's it. I explained my reasoning to those who needed to know and the future boss I was looking forward to working for was just as supportive and understanding as I could've hoped for. My assignment was broken and I was on the market again - for a domestic job this time.  

After some weeks of searching, I believe I found the best fit. The next stop on this adventure will be a familiar one: back to the DC area and the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) where I will be a Deputy Coordinator with the Orientation Division. I will be on the team conducting the six-week "A-100" generalist and specialist orientation courses for all new Foreign Service American employees. I'm really excited about it! It combines everything I naturally gravitate towards: teaching, facilitating conversation, organizing, sharing experiences, mentoring, and feeding the energy of bright shiny pennies as they begin their own new career adventures. And - I'm a direct flight away from family. I can do this, no chest-thumping affirmations required.  This is a two-year assignment, after which, who knows? I would rather cross that bridge as I get there than try to predict where the turns in the road will bring us. 

In the meantime, it feels as if I'm wearing the most elasticy-waistband, softest, brushed cotton pants with fluffy, supportive slippers.  

Now that's a good fit. 

 

Mid-Level Bidding: Round Three!

(New to the process of mid-level bidding? This primer from my 2018 experience will bring you up to speed.) 

Greetings from still-in-El-Salvador where we've just crested our third year and due to my tour extension are headed into the final stretch with one year to go. This means I'm now at bat for another rousing inning in the game we call bidding. To be more precise, I'm in the warm-up circle, taking some swings, sizing up the pitcher, looking for weak spots among the fielders where I might be successful in finding a gap and sprinting to base. At this point in the game, I'm still confidently/naiively imagining I have the chops to get to at least second. However, the competition is tough and the reality is that many good players will strike out in their bidding at-bat as again this year there are fewer bases than batters. Therefore a lot of folks will end up back on the bench.  

Where's the bench? That's a matter of opinion, eye of the beholder and all. Fortunately, one player's bench is another's home run.  For me, the bench is in Washington, DC. Not because I disliked my DC tour and two years of free museums - quiet the opposite, I loved my job and office. It's my bench specifically because spending about $65,000 in rent when I'm a tour or two from retirement would not be a wise investment decision. And no, we're not going to buy a place.

This means I'm left swinging for the fences in the hopes of landing a position that I could not only be relatively successful at, but my husband will enjoy, our cats won't hate, and that might even be kinda' fun. No pressure.

Here's the suspense-building timeline:

About May 2022:

Look at the Projected Vacancies list.  

Ha! Who am I kidding? I started eyeballing this list the week I arrived here three years ago!  Not out of disatisfaction - not at all - but because it is a compulsion, nay, an addiction that the Department fuels via a constant drip-feed of "What's the next adventure? Thinking of a promotion? Oooh, I want to work with THAT person again - where are they going next?" Keep your eye on the horizon, woman! What changed in May was that the list began to gel and offer a somewhat more realistic view of what would be its final version in September. 

June. 

Okay, Maybe Late May As I Couldn't Contain Myself:

Start contacting the incumbents (the people currently in the position I'm considering) and ask a bunch of questions about what the job's like, what are the challenges, what are the pleasures, what's the morale, what is the country like? These responses are sometimes standardized by posts, generally encourage bidders, occasionally are refreshingly frank, but more often depend on the personal outlook of the writer. It can be a mixed bag and so gathering more intel sources is required. 

I suggest getting the inside scoop from anyone you know who has served there.  The old fashioned way...

Here are some of my favorite responses that were instrumental in narrowing my choices, for better or worse:

• Did you read the OIG report?
• Local staff are knowledgeable about the country's generous local labor laws and take full advantage of them.  
• I would say the section would benefit from someone with experience navigating performance improvement and HR issues. 
• Re driving: All these men who grew up watching "The Fast and The Furious" suddenly found themselves behind the wheel of a car with predictable results. It genuinely made doing anything that involved a drive intensely taxing. We nearly got into serious accidents on every outing.
• Want to know what housing is like on a partially closed military base? Google Chernobyl. 
• I would describe the environment as light-hearted and low-impact. Very rarely do I feel challenged here. 
• This country could not possibly add any stress to your life. If you like excitement, this is not the place for you. Your day is almost always going to be exactly what you expect. 
• The workload is manageable and we are fully staffed.
• The locally employed staff are extremely experienced and highly knowledgeable; several staff members have been in the section more than 20 years and are an absolute joy to work with. 

Key phrases like "hidden gem," "fully staffed," "great weather," and "amazing produce" caught my eye, too.

June-July-August

While continuing to whittle down the best options, we also have to start marketing ourselves for these jobs. That requires gathering recommendations from current and former colleagues. As I'm only bidding on consular jobs, I have to request 7-15 Consular Bidders Assessment Tools, aka CBATs or 360s, selected from supervisors, peers, and supervisees who we can reasonably expect will: 

A. Be responsive and willing to take the 15-20 minutes on your behalf;

B. Say something positive about our performance, or at least not too damaging.

 

September 12- The Green Flag Drops and the Race is ON

The final version of the bid list is published! My list ended up with just over 100 options, not a bad start. We must now submit our Statement of Interest. Again, this is the Consular Affairs process, which differs from other bureaus. The Statement of Interest includes three standard questions that will help CA/EX, the office making the decisions on consular jobs, put just the right person in just the right job, or that's the theory anyway. Here are the questions:

1. What experiences and skills make you competitive for these positions?
2. What professional development opportunities do you hope to gain from these positions?
3. Are there other factors affecting your bidding preferences?

The instructions, in brief:

• We will refer to this statement throughout the bidding process, so keep it direct and succinct.  (Read: Don't make us wade through a bunch of wordy, over-personal babble again and again. It won't make us love you.)
• Save your edits and re-writes for your EER! (Friendly chuckle tone implies that one can simply dash off responses to the above questions.)

My translation:  Spend entire Sunday crafting just the right "This is what I can do for YOU!" statement that is confident, professional, polished, error and typo-free while at the same time guiding them to conclude only that Vancouver, BC is what I mean by "close to elderly family" and not Nogales; or "opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a multi-post mission" clearly refers to the United Kingdom and not China.

Phew, that's done. Oh, I should note that we can't make corrections once the big submit button is hit. Again - no pressure.

Next, add your position preferences in priority order. This is the fun part. Fun part for me because for the past few months I've been carefully updating my color-coded Priority List spread sheet, tweaking it ever so slightly until it represents exactly my Dream Post wish list. Or for some, usually tandem couples, the pick-the-least-poisonous-posts list. This year mine has ten posts. Oops no, nine posts. I just learned that one post requires imported pets to be present in the country of export for six months prior to arrival in country (or something complicated like that that I didn't want to risk). That ain't going to work. Sayonara Singapore.  

This list, fortunately, can be updated anytime as the bid season moves on. And trust me, it will be, as we have conversations with CA/EX that may go something like this:

"We see your preferred positions are quite heavily bid. For example, while you listed lovely, stable, English-speaking Zambia - how would you feel instead about a year of language and then going just next door to somewhat less-stable and war-riddled Democratic Republic of Congo? I mean, they're so close and all. Remember, not everyone can go to Sydney, Paris or Tokyo!" 

Cocktail party laughter ensues. 

September and October - 

Consultative Versus Non-Consultative Postions: A Primer

Essentially, jobs that are chiefs of section (Consular Chief instead of just American Citizen Services Chief or Immigrant Visa Chief, for example) are considered "consultative" meaning that post is consulted on who they might like in that role. This person will sit at the big table as part of the embassy country team so it's understandable that post has some say in who that is, but still CA/EX has the final word. How posts discern who their top candidates are requires a good old fashioned resume and references submission and a job interview. This year, I've selected two such consultative positions. For one, a less-popular post, I was offered an interview immediately and had a lovely conversation with the (sort of) decision makers. Fingers crossed. For the second, a heavily-bid annual favorite, they will review my CBATs and then decide if I made it to the swimsuit and talent, interview round.

The remainder of my selected posts are non-consultative, in which case I can just send courtside tickets tucked surreptitiously into fruit baskets to the decision makers - and light candles. 

That's where we are now. Oh wait, I forgot one step: The regular refreshing of the bid count list! The number of people who have submitted bids on all posts is updated thrice daily. This update schedule is posted primarily, in my opinion, to keep us productive throughout the day and prevent us from wearing out the refresh button. My nine bids are registering bid counts from four to 15 and we're only on Day 3.  I eyeball posts with 0-3 bids, just in case, and find myself musing, "Kuwait, hmmm - once you hit 115 degrees the rest is just academic, right?"  

Up Next: October 31 - The Big Reveal... for Some

Flag Day Number Five: Also Known as Handshake Day Number Two

One month ago I introduced our two new kitties, but what gave us the green-light to adopt again was knowing where we'd be heading next summer.  There were a few posts I'd bid on that would have made bringing cats more difficult, so we held off on the big decision until I'd received a job offer, called a handshake. (For those just joining me, I describe the whole mid-level bidding and handshake process here.)

That handshake was offered just before Halloween, and I'm now happy to announce that sometime next summer, we'll be boarding a plane for:

Plaza Libertad

 Not looking familar?  Okay, how about this:

Volcanic backdrop to the city

 Still not sure?  Yeah, I get it. Volcanoes tend to look kind of alike.  Okay, let's try this:

We'll have nice beaches, too!

Care to hike to a volcanic lake?

 Okay, so we're narrowing it down: coastal country, and somewhere on the Ring of Fire.  Well, that could still be a lot of places.  You'll certainly get it now:

Just slightly larger than the state of Massachusetts

Oh fercrissake, just give them the flag!

That's right - EL SALVADOR!  Please make your vacation plans to come visit us in the capital city of San Salvador!

We're very excited about this assignment as it was our number one pick for a number of reasons:

Besides the natural beauty you've gotten a glimpse of above, how would you like a few years of temps going from 80s to low 60s EVERY DAY? For me, that sounds pretty good.  Okay, if I have to be super honest, I love four seasons, but if I had to pick just one of those seasons - and I don't think the trees can sustain Fall year 'round - it would be summer.  But not a muggy, buggy Virginia summer:  at 2159 feet, San Salvador's altitude keeps things a bit less swampy.  Although you may want to plan your visit to avoid the rainy season June to September when the temps are closer to 90 and the city gets about a foot of rain per month delivered via near-daily afternoon showers.  Aim for the dry season from December to March when we'll enjoy dry months in the 70s.  Now we're talking!

We currently live in a neighborhood with lots of Central American restaurants and really enjoy the food and the openly friendly and warm Salvadorans we've met over the years.  We're looking forward to getting to know the culture more from folks still living in their home country, and also exploring the whole region of Central America. 

My job will be very interesting and challenging - which is good. Plus, we already know (and like!) a handful of my future colleagues, including one of my A-100 classmates. The mission seems to be large enough to offer a good variety of jobs that my husband will be looking to snag, and it's a language we've already tackled.  Plus, we've heard only great things about the morale at post - which can make-or-break both the cushiest and the ickiest of assignments. As one of my friends who served his second tour in San Salvador said, "For as much as I loved post - my wife loved it even more."  Considering they were there with three school-age children, that says a lot. 

Oh yeah, about the language thing... My required 3/3 Spanish score expired earlier this year, which means that FSI wants about three months of my time to get back up to that level.  Therefore this assignment comes with a bit of training beforehand at good ole' FSI, and then another torture session known as the language exam.  You'll hear more on this topic this summer, no doubt. 

Finally, El Salvador is pretty darn close to the U.S.  This normally isn't an important criteria for us, but let's face it - no one is getting any younger, and I'd like to be able to get to the West Coast in less than a day to visit family.  It's not Juarez-close, but better than Buenos Aires or certainly Nairobi - two other posts we were considering. 

So there you have it!  We now know where we'll live for the next handful of years.

C'mon down!