The Waiting Game

I have turned in my final bid list to my Career Development Officer (CDO). Where I’ll be heading overseas after training is now out of my hands. It was never much in my hands in the first place, but my chance to make my preferences known is now past.

Of the 80 or so positions listed, I ended up ranking about 10 of them as high, 25 or so as medium, and the rest as lows. There are actually many of the mediums and even some of the lows that we would be more than happy to be sent, but there are many factors that need to be considered. For instance, there was a post in Madagascar that I’m sure would be fascinating, but they need someone there in just a few months and that person needs to be at a certain proficiency of French that I don’t currently have. Other jobs on the list have time for me to receive the necessary language training, but would essentially set me up for a very poor second tour due to how the system works. It’s very easy to look at this list of exotic places and dream about where you want to go, but it becomes much more tricky when you have to figure in about twenty other variables.

Now, however, it is out of my hands and I’m quite happy about that. Frankly, I’m tired of thinking about it and I think my class shares that opinion. All we can do is make our preferences known and hope for the best. The CDOs have a very difficult job and I’m glad that I do not have to do it.

Now, we wait.

I won’t find out where we are going until Flag Day. Not the official U.S. holiday, but the ceremony that is held for our class on June 6. On that day, our whole class plus family and friends will meet in a gymnasium on the FSI campus. A table at the front of the hall will be covered with flags of all of the countries on our bid list and one by one, those flags will be held up for the class to identify (better start brushing up on the flags of Macedonia and Yemen now…) and then the person heading to that post will be called up. It sounds like a lot of fun and I can’t wait to find out where we’re going.

Luckily, there are many interesting classes over the next few weeks to keep my occupied. At the end of this week our class will be heading to West Virginia for a few days for an off-site leadership and team-building workshop. I imagine there will be lots of ropes and drums involved, not to mention beer. We have a class follies night and I’m on the committee that is working on writing the pieces. No one will be spared.

Blog Notes: I’ve added another good Foreign Service blog link to the site. If you look to the right you’ll find a link to Girl in the Rain. I thought we needed a little female influence around here. I would link to straight from this entry, but this browser is acting up and not giving me the little link button and I don’t remember the HTML off-hand to make something a link. C’est la vie.