My A-100 classmates and I are just a dozen days away from the milestone of six full months as Foreign Service Officers. Ever since May we've been saying goodbye as some of us headed off to various posts worldwide, and now quite a few of us are out there. It's been great to hear some of the experiences our friends are having in Niger, Korea, Canada, Italy, and so on and so forth.
We aren't the newest generation in the State Department anymore either. The 145th and the 146th have come and gone, some of them are even out at post by now, and the 147th is at FSI now, looking forward to their Flag Day on the 31st.
Meanwhile, I've had my chance to experience some changes as well. As reported in the previous update, I finished my classroom training over a month ago. Since then I have been keeping busy, moving on to my OJT (On-the-Job Training) at HST (the Harry S Truman Building, also known as Main State). Not all FSOs get OJT as part of their initial training, so I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity.
This was my desk for the past five weeks. As a matter of fact, it was the first time in my life that I've had my own office, with a door and everything. The office is in a suite of rooms in HST occupied by the Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs, which is part of the Bureau of European Affairs. Working in EUR/NB was a great experience. I learned a lot (about how the building works, what Washington expects from us at our Embassies abroad, what a future DC tour might be like, and not least, how to write for the State Department). I met some great colleagues, with whom I hope I'll have other opportunities to work together in the future. And I felt again the satisfaction of being productive, making an actual contribution - you know... working!
For the first two weeks of my mini-tour, I filled in for the Denmark/Iceland Desk Officer. The previous incumbent had already left for his next post, and his replacement hadn't arrived yet. That was an incredible opportunity, and it was fascinating to follow the reporting coming out of Copenhagen - basically consuming the stuff that I will soon be producing. It was great timing, too, because I was able to help out with our new Ambassador's preparations for departure - she had just received Senate confirmation before I started, and she arrived in Denmark on July 29.
After the new desk officer started, I had three weeks of generally helping out with the EUR/NB portfolio of eight countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). I contributed to all sorts of really fascinating projects, including some drafting, which was a great opportunity to learn first-hand about the writing style that this bureaucracy needs. Fortunately the people in the office are all great editors, and great at mentoring in general - people were continually finding interesting projects that I could work on, telling me about their own career paths, giving me advice about what to do once I get to Copenhagen, and generally getting me some exposure to an exciting side of real Foreign Service life.
It seems somewhat common for people in this career to look down on tours in Foggy Bottom. "I didn't join the FOREIGN service to stew in D.C.," they say, or they make snide remarks about ladder-climbers who keep coming back to domestic assignments just for the career-enhancing networking opportunities they provide. I do not subscribe at all to this view. In the admittedly limited exposure I've had to State Department HQ, I found it to be a great working environment, full of people totally committed to working with foreign diplomats, other US government agencies, our Embassies abroad, and the general public to advance our worldwide foreign policy goals.
This is where policy is made; when we get to post, we are taught repeatedly, we can recommend actions to Washington, but the final decision-making happens here, and the people in Washington tell the embassies abroad what to do, not the other way around. This is also the one place where the world comes together into a big picture; each post is responsible for the relationship with one country, but here in offices like mine we have a team of people working on a whole region and seeing how it fits together. One floor up are teams of people looking at larger regions and issues that span the globe. All this, and it's also a really fun place to work. I do hope to serve here in the future, so don't think you're finally getting rid of me for good just because I'm a diplomat now!