Where I explain how I got here

Back in 2009, had my first attempt at the orals. After scoring just under the cut off, I felt a bit dejected and not just a little useless. For days after, I moped around the house with Victorian sighs and an attempt to consume pint after pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream only to eventually be set straight by my maternal of all people. I had just graduated college, had been working at a new position for less than a month and had managed to get invited to Washington DC for a competitive oral examination that gets rid of a good majority of its candidates. What right did I have to wallow in self-pity about?

Maybe just a little bit of self-pity is allowed. I had that joie de vivre that all youngsters get when they think they’ve learned all they can about the world and should be allowed into the big kids’ table to make drastic changes and save the world. You should pity us young padawan.

Ahem, let’s get back on topic.

In February 2010, I scheduled another attempt at the written FSOT exam. I didn’t pass. Personally I don’t think I was all that sincere in my efforts to actually prepare for the test. I had gone through some ups and downs at my current job and would probably have skipped out on the test altogether if there wasn’t that inconvenient $50 fee. Smart of the government to do that, we value our money when there’s the possibility of it escaping our pockets.

I tried to forget about the Foreign Service for a little while after that. There were a lot of other opportunities within the government and maybe I didn’t want to work for the big ominous State department anyways. (Maybe I was also distracted by the sudden appearance of my significant other and big brown eyes, but that will be saved for another post. In private. With a few more disclaimers.) A part of me always wondered “what if” though. What if I had just scored a measly 0.05 more points? What if I had tried studying for the oral? What if I really did manage to find Doc Brown’s Delorrean and go back in time to change history to create a world where  beavers are our supreme overlords?

Well, we’ll never know will we? In January 2012, with the prompting of my other half, I signed up yet again for the written exam in February. This is a bit of my adventure.