Some of the most common questions I seem to get from prospective hires, is in regards to salary, financial prep before joining, and what true take home pay actually looks like. After I was hired, but before I started, I did a little dive into the way salary is calculated in the Foreign Service (FS),
Since I will be moving to Peshawar next summer, I thought it would be nice to highlight the assignment a bit, and give a brief history on the city and our role there. Peshawar is a city of 2.3 million people and the capital city of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is found in
Wow, what a month for anniversaries. Our nation’s birthday, this blog’s birthday, and this month my family celebrated one year of living in Nouakchott. How has it already been a year? After seemingly just arriving, my family finds ourselves as one of the more established families at post. We have crested past the halfway point
How difficult is it to get time away from the job if you are the only provider at the embassy? If you are new, is accruing paid leave difficult? A few people have asked me this, and this was something I also asked folks before I onboarded. Simply stated: It is not difficult to get
Several folks have asked me recently what my “day to day” work life is like, and I realized that even before I arrived to post, but had completed orientation, this was a huge black hole of knowledge for me too. I think most folks coming from the private sector are focused on patient volumes and
Has it really been 2 years? This past week marked 2 years since I started this blog, documenting my journey through the belly of the Foreign Service. Holy moly. At the time I was living in West Texas, working as a hospitalist, and 6 months away from receiving a job offer to join. Since then
I learned this past month where I will be headed, and am so excited to announce I will be taking a solo assignment to Peshawar, Pakistan. Choosing to do a solo post might seem like a strange decision, and a few months ago I would have never entertained it, but ultimately my wife and I
I feel like I have been highlighting a lot of the cool benefits joining the Foreign Service entails, and this week adds to that. The Bureau of Medical Services has a mentorship program where new providers are paired with a like minded more senior provider, who they can go to for questions, career advice, and
A few family members and now one reader have asked me if there have been any pleasant surprises to this lifestyle. Although we are still early in this journey, roughly a year in, there have indeed been a few things that have been nice aspects to this lifestyle that we didn’t really account for or
One of the things Foreign Service folks love to talk about at just about every social gathering or event you attend is previous assignments, future assignments, and bidding. Everyone always seems to have one foot halfway out the door even though they still have a significant amount of time in the place they currently are.
