A Traveler in the Foreign Service: The list, the call, the flag- assignments in the Foreign Service

by Dave Seminara on

The most common question I get from people who have a passing interest in joining the Foreign Service is: how hard is to get posted to Rome, Paris, Prague, Sydney and other popular vacation destinations. The best way to get a feel for your chances is to have a look at the complete list of U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.

There are more than 200 posts in the Foreign Service and for every Prague there are at least ten places more like Karachi or Bujumbura. The largest U.S. embassy in the world is Baghdad, so your chances of donning a flak jacket by the Tigris over the course of a career are infinitely greater than enjoying a tour in Rome.

On the first day of my career in the Foreign Service, I was sitting in an auditorium next to my fiancée, and in the company of 94 other Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) and their families, waiting for the list. All incoming FSOs start their careers with a two-month long class called A-100, a sort of intro to diplomacy, and on the first day, everyone had already heard that the list was coming.

The list would contain all the jobs around the world we’d have to bid on, and I had butterflies in my stomach as I sat waiting to see ours.

“There are ninety-five jobs on this list- one for each of you,” said John Dinkelman, our course coordinator whom we came to know as “Dink.” “All of these jobs will be filled.”

Dink went on to proscribe the rules: each of us had to bid on twenty-five of the ninety-five jobs; near the end of the class, we’d have a Flag Day, in which we’d be given a flag, representing our assignment. The Career Development Officers (CDOs) would try to send us all to posts we had bid on, but if that wasn’t possible, they’d make what Dink referred to as the call. If you got the call, it meant that you were going someplace that wasn’t on your bid list.

When Dink finally passed the list out, I scanned through the listing of ninety-five jobs and felt a surge of excitement. Tblisi. Tashkent. Buenos Aires. Skopje. New Delhi. Guangzhou. The idea that I’d soon be living in one of these places seemed a bit surreal. But there were also some sobering spots on the list that I wasn’t keen on as well: Kingston, Port au Prince, Karachi, Tijuana, Addis Ababa and Dhaka to name a few.

Just prior to Flag Day, we were taken to a downscale “resort” in West Virginia for a retreat and it was fascinating to watch people kiss up to the three CDOs who would decide our fates. They were like rock stars for the weekend but I didn’t court them because I was afraid that it might backfire.

Most of my classmates had the good sense to compile their bid list based primarily on the jobs and their career interests. There are five career tracks in the Foreign Service, called “cones”- consular, economic, management, political and public diplomacy. FSOs enter the service as junior officers; the first two assignments are directed by the CDOs and one of the first two tours has to be consular.

But I wasn’t thinking about the list in terms of career tracks. For me, it was like a big travel brochure and I used Lonely Planet and other guidebooks to research the various posts. My first choice was Tashkent because I’d been to Uzbekistan the year before and had fallen in love with Bukhara. I’d later come to realize how silly this mindset was, but at the time I was blissfully unaware of the fact that what makes a place great to visit doesn’t necessarily make it a place you want to live in for 2-3 years.

In the days leading up to Flag Day, I lived in fear of getting the call, but thankfully it never came, and as we assembled in an auditorium at the Foreign Service Institute for the moment of truth- Flag Day- Dink told us he had good news.

“No one got the call, so you are all headed somewhere you bid on,” he said, standing at a podium next to a long table filled with dozens of flags from all over the world.

Dink started calling names and handing out flags and it was fascinating to see how people responded to their assignment. Most smiled, a few looked mildly disappointed, a couple jumped up and down on the way to the podium, as if they’d just been told to “come on down,” on The Price is Right, and one young woman was seen actually shedding tears shortly after being handed her flag. (Destination: Kingston, Jamaica)

A couple that met and fell in love during A-100 requested tandem assignments to the same post and the lovebirds were both handed Polish flags. (Never mind the fact that they broke up a few days later and approached the CDOs to request split assignments, which were granted.)

Dozens of names were called and a whole slew of posts I’d bid on fell by the wayside. Tashkent. Moscow. Stockholm. Buenos Aires. Almaty. Minsk. And then I heard my name called while Dink was clutching a flag that looked like….what the hell flag was that? For an excruciatingly long moment I heard my name and saw the flag but couldn’t figure out what country I was headed to. It looked like the flag of imperial Japan, but then Dink uttered the words.

“Consular assignment, Skopje, Macedonia,” he said.

Skopje was my sixth choice, so I was relatively pleased. My fiancé, Jen, was back in Chicago finishing up a graduate degree, so while everyone else celebrated or grieved in the auditorium, I snuck outside to make my own version of the call.

“Where are we going?” she asked, breathlessly.

“Skopje, Macedonia,” I said.

There was a very long period of silence while we both digested this news, until, finally, Jen spoke.

“Is that good or bad?”

I had no idea but knew we were about to find out.

(Note: The call has now gone the way of the typewriter. FSOs now have to bid on everything on their list.)

[Flickr image via Haysels]

Next: Stuck in an elevator- a perfect metaphor for life in a fishbowl.

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.

A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Can a guy who didn’t get high get a security clearance?

by Dave Seminara on

I was sitting at my kitchen table with a former law-enforcement official feeling nervous about the fact that I’d never taken any illegal drugs.

“In the last seven years, have you illegally used any controlled substance- cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, hash, narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, steroids, inhalants or prescription drugs?” the man asked, reading from a list of prepared questions.

“No, not at all,” I answered.

The man looked up from his yellow legal pad and put his pen down.

“You never smoked marijuana?” he asked, squinting his eyes as if struggling to see me.

I had no pony tail, I wasn’t wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt, and there were no half eaten cartons of Cherry Garcia in sight. Was my story really so unbelievable? I half-considered concocting some recreational drug use just to be a bit less boring.

I had passed the Foreign Service written exam and the oral assessment and had received a “conditional” offer of employment from the State Department. The offer was contingent upon being able to pass background and medical examinations, and having the good fortune to be invited to join an A-100 class, which is an introductory class for incoming Foreign Service Officers.

My kitchen table non-confession was with a contract background investigator who had been retained by the Office of Personnel Management to delve into my background to ensure that I wasn’t a spy, a terrorist, or a drug addict.
After the series of questions on drug and alcohol use, he asked me if I had any plans to overthrow the U.S. government by force. He was reading from a prepared list of questions, so it wasn’t like he’d sized me up and thought I was a radical jihadi, but I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever answered yes to that question.

I sailed through the rest of his prepared questions without a raised eyebrow until we got to a section on my prior foreign travel and foreign contacts. I did my best to compile a list of my foreign travel over the prior seven year period, but had no idea who I should list in the foreign contacts section. I’d made dozens of foreign friends in my travels over the years but for the sake of simplicity, listed only a few as “close and continuing contacts.”

I assumed that the State Department would want Foreign Service Officers who had traveled extensively and had foreign contacts, but in the context of a background investigation, foreign travel and contacts are viewed with suspicion, and each foreign trip elicits a litany of additional questions.

After speaking with me, the investigator started knocking on the doors of my neighbors to ask about me each of the many addresses I’d live in during the previous seven years. After several of my former bosses and co-workers were interviewed, I was warned that the investigator needed to interview my current boss.

The State Department recruiter had specifically warned us against giving notice at our current jobs because our employment offer was merely “conditional” and not a done deal, so I had to inform my boss that I was quitting. Probably. But not really giving notice just yet. They were understanding, but it made me a bit of a lame duck months before I was to leave and the day the investigator came to our small office, the place was buzzing with gossip. I had to tell everyone that I was “probably” going to join the Foreign Service. Sometime soon, I hoped.

More than a year after I passed the Foreign Service exam I finally had my security clearance and a concrete offer to join the Foreign Service. A week prior to leaving for training in Washington, I asked my girlfriend to marry me. She said yes, but we had no clue what country we’d be in the next year and that suited me just fine.

Next: The List, The Call, The Flag- Assignments in the Foreign Service

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.

[flickr image via Wiros]

A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Not much of a diplomat

by Dave Seminara on

My journey into the U.S. Foreign Service started as a Colonel Muammar Gaddafi impersonator in a school auditorium near Buffalo, New York in 1986. I was taking part in an 8th grade Model U.N. assembly, and had been given the difficult brief of dressing up like a citizen of Malta and delivering a speech advocating Maltese interests, whatever those were during the Cold War.

According to my trusty Encyclopedia Britannica, (remember those?) Libya was one of Malta’s primary trading partners, and since it appeared to be relatively close to Libya on the map, I went ahead and donned a flowing white Arab-style robe with matching headdress and aviator sunglasses for my speech. A photograph of me in my Gaddafi costume appeared in The Buffalo News, and someone at my school decided to send a copy of the press clipping to the embassy of Malta in Washington, in the absurd belief that they might find some amusement in the fact that a 13-year old boy was photographed grossly misrepresenting their country.

A few weeks later, I received a package from the office of the Prime Minister of Malta with some books about the country, along with a scathing letter, which darkly and absurdly hinted at a sinister, anti-Maltese conspiracy perpetrated by our “so-called free press” in Buffalo. My school was convinced that I’d created an international incident and forwarded the letter to the State Department. Five months later, I received a letter from the State Department’s Desk Officer for Malta, which contained an unlikely piece of advice: consider a career in diplomacy.

My parents bought me a shortwave radio and the crackling sounds of far-off places fed my desire to see the world. After college, I took jobs in advertising and publishing more or less to fund travel opportunities, and took off as soon as my bank account allowed for extended overland trips in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Central Asia and China. The trips left gaping holes in my resume but renewed my interest in joining the Foreign Service.

Wanderlust is a romanticized concept but it can also be an affliction, a malady that prevents people from becoming settled, productive members of the rat race. After returning to Chicago, my adopted hometown, after along overland trip in 2000, I resolved to make a serious push to get into the Foreign Service, in the hopes that it would be a career that could channel my wanderlust into something productive. Rehabilitate me, if you will.Others have had much longer and more distinguished careers in the Foreign Service than I have, and this series isn’t meant to be a definitive account of what life in the service is like. There are more than 5,000 Foreign Service Officers working in some 200 posts all around the world, and everyone has their own stories, experiences and perspectives.

When I tell people that I was in the Foreign Service, I get a lot of blank stares and awkward questions. Even well educated people often have no idea what the Foreign Service is.

“Is that like the French Foreign Legion?” a medical doctor and Ivy League graduate once asked me.

In this series, former Foreign Service Officer, Dave Seminara, will attempt to explain what the Foreign Service is and isn’t, share some Foreign Service vignettes, and provide an answer to this question: is the Foreign Service a good career option for compulsive travelers?

Next: ‘You’ve Never Smoked any Marijuana?’ Getting into the Foreign Service

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.