Life Transitioned

Well, life happened. It's now over a year later, on Mother's Day to be exact, and we're living in Warsaw, Poland.

Our first shipment of household effects arrives tomorrow. It contains the items that have been in storage since we packed out before moving to Virginia for A-100. What things am I looking forward to seeing again? My books; my fabric, sewing, and craft supplies; my guitar; my desk. The 5-year-old is looking forward to seeing our collection of Calvin and Hobbes books and her ukulele (though I don't think that she has realized that it is showing up in this shipment). What will we still be waiting for? The kid's bike and my sewing machine. Those come in the shipment that was packed a month and a half ago, at the end of language training. We're hoping that shipment and the car will arrive later this week.

Life in transition

In just about three weeks, I will report to the State Department and begin my A-100 training to become a foreign service officer (FSO). This represents only a partly planned life-changing event, as I originally began the process to become an FSO in August 2014 after finding out that a scholarship I had received during my doctoral training allowed me to skip directly to the oral assessment stage (for those unfamiliar with the foreign service, there are multiple time-consuming steps that occur before the oral assessment, so this was a huge boon). I didn't really prepare a lot for the oral assessment since I didn't expect to pass, but I was going to be in the D.C. area around the time of the assessment and the foreign service was a career path I had considered previously. I ended up passing with a pretty respectable score and after receiving my medical and security clearance, I was placed on the foreign service register in my career track (political) in early 2015. I got my invite for the April A-100 in January of this year and the last month and a half has been consumed with planning the transition.

This was only partly planned because I had envisioned myself going into academia after finishing my Ph.D. in political science, but that plan quickly ran aground after a one-year lecturer position and a couple unsuccessful years on the academic job market. Doctoral programs really condition their students for the expectation that a tenure-track professorship is the only "successful" career track, so it took a little while to adapt to the idea that I should pursue non-academic career options. More than a year working as an anti-corruption analyst for a due diligence company convinced me that my prior assumptions about proper career paths for a Ph.D.-holder were myopic, as I was satisfied with my job and with the feeling that I was contributing to a social good. When I unexpectedly received the offer to become an FSO, I had actually written off my chances since hiring had been abysmal throughout 2015 and I was going to "time off" the register in October 2016. However, the federal budget deal in Washington actually gave the State Department some predictability in funding for this fiscal year and the hiring rate increased so much that I was swept up in the second class of 2016.

There are a lot of things to digest and talk about concerning life in the foreign service, and this blog is intended to give me and my wife a venue to write about our thoughts and the things that our family is going through. We just had a baby boy this week to go along with our four year old daughter, so we are cognizant of how much this change is going to affect their lives in addition to our own. As such, this blog will hopefully be of interest not only to family and friends who want to read about our experiences, but also to other present or future FSOs who want insights into the process. Given my academic background, there will also be a healthy dollop about how this pertains to my understanding of international politics and diplomatic history.