Last month brought some news I’d been waiting a long time to receive: I was tenured by the Foreign Service Specialist Selection Board.

If you’re wondering what exactly tenure is, you’re not alone. When I first joined the Foreign Service, I mostly associated the word with ancient college professors, people who could say something completely unhinged in a lecture hall and still keep their jobs.

In the Foreign Service, tenure means something very different. When both generalists and specialists are hired, we’re brought on as career-conditional employees. The condition is simple: earn tenure, or your career ends. “Getting tenured” is one of the most significant milestones in a Foreign Service career, because it comes with greater job protections and, for most people, the real possibility of completing a full career.

For generalists and medical specialists like me, eligibility for the first tenure review comes three years after your hiring date. A cable is released listing everyone up for tenure, and shortly after, a board convenes to review evaluation reports and determine whether you should be retained as a career officer. A month or two later, another cable goes out with the results.

If you’re not granted tenure on the first look, you get a second chance a year later. If that doesn’t go your way, there’s sometimes a third and truly final review six months after that. Not getting tenure on the first look is actually very common. In my generalist cohort, fewer than half received tenure on their first review, though the vast majority eventually will. One of the biggest reasons is that boards like to see evaluations from multiple supervisors, and many officers spend a year or more in language training early on, meaning there’s often limited performance data to judge.

In my case, and for most MED specialists, the timeline looks different. We usually arrive at post shortly after joining the Department and don’t spend time in language training. That means by the time we’re reviewed, the board has three full evaluation reports plus supplemental evaluations from our Regional Medical Officers, plenty of material to work with.

What made this tenure cycle especially difficult was the delay. Results for the summer board normally come out in August or early September. This year, internal changes, workforce reductions, and then a government shutdown combined to push everything back by nearly six months. As August passed, then September, and still nothing came out, the stress level steadily climbed. Then the government entered what became the longest shutdown in history, stretching into November, still no news.

Finally, out of nowhere in mid-January, the cable dropped. Seeing my name, and the names of the MED specialists I onboarded with, was an enormous relief.

Better late than never.

This marks the most important milestone of my State Department career so far, and I couldn’t be happier. The system is very much “up or out,” so in the short term this means I get to keep my job through at least 2037. To make it to a full 20-year career, I’ll need just one promotion in the next 11 years, something that should be very doable, but not something I’ll ever take for granted.

Here’s hoping the rest of 2026 brings more good news.

—Nick