U S A

I mentioned in a previous post that I went to Washington, D.C. for my foreign service interview. So, my 2020 started off with a 12-day trip to America. I never thought or envisioned going back home during my Peace Corps service. I thought it would just make it harder to come back, harder to finish. Not that I don’t enjoy my experience here, but you try eating my mom’s food or feeling my niece’s kiss on your cheek or hearing my cat purr next to you and tell me it’s not hard to leave that. It’s always hard. But, never say (or think) never, I guess. After qualifying for the interview stage of the Foreign Service application, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity–even if I had to physically be at the testing location. It’s my dream career. So, I came back. And passed. And got to see my family and hometown. Seems worth it…

Let me give you a brief overview of this crazy interview day. First, it’s not even called an interview, that’s misleading. It’s called the Foreign Service Oral Assessment, the daunting FSOA. Assessment it is. There are three parts: a group exercise, a case management exercise, and a structured interview. I can’t say much about it (non-disclosure); just know I was in that DC building from 6:30 am to 5:30 pm (sans lunch). I was tested alongside 5 other people, though they weren’t competition (thank goodness for that–competition turns me into someone else…). At the end of the day, all of us could pass, none of us, or some permutation in between. We all were currently living abroad (makes sense since it was Jan. 3, post holiday time) and everyone was super interesting and nice, which put me at ease. We went through three tasks:

1. Group Exercise

Each of you is pitching a different project (that you are given regarding a fake country and fake problems and fake parameters). Your job is to explain your project, vouch for your project, and come to a consensus among your group on which projects to go ahead with. All under time constraints. The point is not necessarily to have your project “win” (though you need to support it), but logically explain yourself and show you can work in a group. There are 4 assessors watching you in each corner of the room, saying nothing other than when time is up. This is the only activity where you work with the other interviewees.

2. Case Management

You are given a binder with pages and pages and pages of information: maybe emails, work orders, memos, country information (again, these are fake countries with fake—but realistic— problems) and are tasked to write a memo, solving some workplace problem. This needs to be eloquent, answer the tasks at hand, include number analysis, and be under two pages. You have 90 minutes.

3. Structured Interview

The most “regular” part of the day. Even this is broken up into three parts: background and motivation (like regular interview stuff), hypothetical situations (you are put in different stressful scenarios and asked to talk through how you’d logically solve a problem–maybe there’s an earthquake, government coup, logistical nightmare…some crisis), then past behavior (different questions to give you a chance to share how you’ve approached past experiences that would indicate you’d make a good foreign service officer). This was a doozy. I thought this would be my strongest section (and maybe it was) but it did not go as well as I hoped. I knew coming in that the assessors remain “stone-faced” but this turned out a lot harder to push through than I expected.

At the end of the day, you are all waiting nervously in the front holding room until they call you back, one-by-one. If you pass, they escort you back to another holding room; if you fail, they escort you out of the building. Either way, when you’re in the first waiting room, you have no idea about the others’ fate. It feels a bit like a game show. Of course, I was called last. I only had about 30 seconds to ponder whether that was a good or bad omen until I moved into another room and… offered a conditional job offer! YAY!

Each of the three parts of the interview are scored from 1 to 7. Your combined average must be 5.25 or above, but you don’t have to pass every section. Lucky for me. I failed the case management section (but you don’t know your individual score on any section so I don’t know how badly), and passed the group exercise and structured interview to give a final average score of 5.4. So, not stellar (which matters later in this hiring saga), but for now: HOORAY! I wasn’t even expecting to get to the Oral Assessment on my first attempt applying, let alone to pass it… I still can’t quite believe it.

Then I was put into another holding room to be briefed with the others who passed–three of us total in our group! Next steps: security and medical clearances. These can take months and months… If I am successfully cleared for worldwide service, then my 5.4 score gets put on a list for up to 18 months. Every few months, based on hiring needs, people are called off the list and you are bumped up/down as others pass the interview or “time off”. If you don’t get a job offer in 18 months, you time off and have to repeat the process from the initial test (remote) to the essays to the interview to the security/medical clearances. For now though, all I can do is wait and hope (and continue to teach!). Anyway, after initiating security clearances and getting more paperwork, I was free to leave the building. And free to celebrate! For once, it was nice to get immediate feedback and not have to wait months to find out.

I promised myself that either way, I would pretend I’m not a Peace Corps Volunteer and treat myself to a nice dinner. As fate would have it, there was a Georgian (as in the country) restaurant a few blocks from my hotel. For the last few months, I’ve been fixated on Georgian wine, particularly their orange/amber wine specialty, which involves fermenting white wine grapes like a red wine, supposedly creating crazy flavor profiles. And that led me to one of the best dining experiences of my life. For me, that might have even been the highlight of the day…

I had a flight of amber wines, then a jojoli salad (pickled vegetables with sprouts from a caper plant), then cremini mushrooms stuffed with cheese made in-house, then a walnut cake drizzled with honey and a sour cherry sauce à la homemade gelato… The wine was so different from any white wine I’ve ever tried. If it was a blind taste test, I would have guessed I was drinking a red wine or even a liquor like a brandy. Different, and I liked it. In fact, even if it was a seeing test most would have no idea. A man that sat next to me at the bar gave me a quizzical look after seeing my flight and asked if I was drinking scotch. Because the color is exactly that. (I quickly–and sassily– assured him that I was not downing glasses of Scotch… and giddily enlightened him about the uniqueness of Georgian amber wine). Anyway, I was smitten (with the wine, not the man). One of my next trips must be to Georgia.

After DC, I planned ~4 days in Pagosa. They passed like a blur, and I’m so happy I got to go. My college friends drove all the way to see me for 24 hours (boo that they had to go back to work), my cousin drove from Denver, and so many other friends and family visited— it meant so much! I got to share stories and pictures and memories, and just enjoy the familiar. Although it’s hard to transition back from home, I don’t regret going. I will see everyone this calendar year, and I know I can’t let my time left in Namibia slip through my fingers. I will miss it the second I leave. Life’s not fair–there’s always something or someone to be missed… that’s what makes time spent together so special I guess.

Qatar:

I highly recommend flying with Qatar Airways. My layover in Doha was more than 8 hours both ways, so they paid for my transport out of the airport and a stay in a hotel, giving me the chance to explore a bit of the city (Doha is considered safe, even for a solo female travel, at all times, including the middle of the night, when my layovers were).

DC:

Post-Interview Georgian Dinner:

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