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
As another year comes to a close, I want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. For many of us, 2025 was not an easy year. It demanded flexibility, patience, and a willingness to adapt to uncertainty (important traits if you want to be in the FS). For those already serving overseas, it reinforced
With Myanmar on the cusp of their first elections since the 2021 Military Coup, I thought it would be a good opportunity to provide a brief recent history on Myanmar. While I assume most people reading this blog have some sense of where Myanmar is, whenever I am back home and tell people where I
I’ve been in the Foreign Service for three and a half years — just long enough to have settled into the rhythm of this strange, rewarding career, but not long enough to have lived through a government shutdown. Until now. Before this week, shutdowns were something I’d only read about in the news or heard
Being a government employee comes with plenty of stereotypes—job security, decent benefits, stable pay. But if you’ve ever actually worked for the federal government, you know that “stability” is a fragile illusion (this year more than ever). Nothing makes that clearer than a government shutdown, which always seems to be looming over our heads. On
Last month the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) ceased to exist as part of the restructuring of the U.S. Government, and the remnants were folded into the Department of State. For those that don’t know, USAID makes up a large presence at overseas embassies, particularly in the developing world, so their departure has
I have received this question multiple times from readers interested in joining the Foreign Service, and the simple answer is: I don’t know. For the last several months there has been a government wide freeze on hiring, and at this point it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. What this means is job announcements
One of the benefits provided to employees of the Foreign Service serving in unaccompanied posts, is the department will pay for your kids to meet you in another country, called family reunification travel. After a lot of discussing with Angeli and our eldest daughter, we came to the conclusion that we wanted to meet up
One of the most common questions about the hiring process I get, especially for folks that have passed the Oral Assessment, pertains to the security clearance process. Unfortunately, it remains somewhat of an enigma. In order to be hired for the State Department, just about everyone, Medical Providers included, need to be able to obtain
On March 28, 2025, a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar’s Sagaing Region, near the city of Mandalay, causing widespread devastation. Although myself and the rest of U.S. Embassy Rangoon were unharmed during the events, the same could not be said for tens of thousands of people that were injured, lost their lives, or their
