For the first time in well over a year, a short hiring window for MPs has opened, and it closes on July 22nd, 2026. If you have been interested in joining the Foreign Service, now is your chance. The hiring process has been drastically altered and I will go over it in a bit more
No, I’m not retiring. Having just a hair over 4 years of service, I am nearly 16 years away from when I would first be elidable. However, as I am now in my early 40s, been working fulltime for nearly 20 years, I have started to look with an eye toward retirement and realized that
A few folks have asked me over the years what promotion’s actually mean in the Foreign Service, and specifically what impact they have for MED professionals. I have mentioned it a few times when discussing EERs and tenure, but haven’t really explained it well in practical terms, particularly for a MED professional working for the
Spring brings about a favorite time of every employee in the Foreign Service, their annual evaluation reports. The Employee Evaluation Report (EER) carries a lot of weight. Not just because it matters for promotions and assignments, but because of what it has traditionally required: time, careful phrasing, and more than a little second-guessing. Drafting accomplishment
A few posts back, I mentioned that I had been officially tenured by the Department of State. A reader was kind enough to send a congratulatory email and also asked if I could elaborate a bit more on what tenure actually means and how the process works. It’s a great question, and one that can
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
