A Commitment to Blog

I think it's about time to admit to myself that my Foreign Service dream might never come true. You might look at my last officially notified ranking, #27, and think, "How can it be that high and she still be worried about not being chosen?" Well, if it's one thing I've learned, it's that nothing is guaranteed about this business of getting into the Foreign Service. Ranking has all the stability of a yo-yo in constant motion and scores that would guarantee an invite at one point fall far short of the mark at another.

So, I've been thinking about my blog. I'm not really a blogger. The tendency to share my thoughts or activities doesn't just come to me that naturally. However, I decided to start this blog for a very specific reason and promised myself I'd make a special effort with it.

When I first started applying to the Foreign Service, I was thrilled to find blogs by working FSOs. My main focus, however, was on their early entries, the ones where they talked about the process of becoming an FSO. Many of them were quite sketchy there, so I started looking for blogs that were written by candidates, that detailed the lengthy and agonizing struggle that some -- not all -- people go through to get this job. I was hungry for information about the FSOT, the QEP, the Orals, etc., and how it felt to take each step. But I found very few blogs like that. Most people, it seems, only begin their Foreign Service blogs when they actually join the Foreign Service, right after getting the A-100 invitation, when they know the adventure is about to begin. There seem to be relatively few of us who start their FS blog well before there's a guarantee of anything. I hoped this blog, for better or worse, would help fill that niche.

So now, I'm sitting here and thinking. Suppose I don't get in? What will I do about this blog? When will I stop writing it? I think I'll stop when my candidacy ends. I hope that the blog will segue into a Foreign Service career, that I will get to write the next chapter, about life in the A-100, but if I don't, then I will at least write until July 2012. That's when my candidacy is to automatically terminate. I will leave the blog up after that and be available to answer questions or respond to comments, if there are any. I hope that whether I get through or not, this blog will help those who are walking a similar path.

(Gee, I get all goose-pimply just thinking about this. It reminds me of an Indiana Jones kind of thing, where somebody finds himself in some unexplored and unfamiliar part of the world, then spots a skeleton in the corner of a dark cave. There's a message in blood on the walls and the skeleton's bony finger is pointing the way forward --> That way!) :-)