A Foreign Service Danger
Welcome to Day 4 of The Hegemonist Spring Break. The water’s a bit rough today, so stick to the hammocks and listen to the lifeguard. In any case, enjoy!
People’s perceptions of the Foreign Service don’t always match up with the realities. Traveling is one of these. I think travel is at least a partial motivator to the majority of hopeful Foreign Service Officers. On day 1 of this series I posed a series of questions, and ya’ll answered phenomenally, here are a few observations:
- “I think that many people don’t understand the difference between *travel* and *living in a foreign country*. They are two phenomenally different things.” -Kelsey
- “Some diplomats integrate more into the local community than others, but in general there are whole categories of people (Peace Corps Volunteers, Fulbright fellows, journalists) who are much less isolated and have a better idea of how life is for the citizens of a given country.” -JC
- “You just have to know from the outset that you can’t be a crazy undergrad in this job.” -Hannah
In all honesty, the entire comments section of that post is well worth a read if you want to get more opinions.
Why Diplomats Can Sometimes be Isolated
- Diplomats are frequently middle class people living in middle class neighborhoods in countries where the middle class simply doesn’t exist.
- Diplomats are generally posted to capital cities, and capital cities generally suck. Indeed, until 20 years ago, DC was a nightmare, how can we expect impoverished countries to do better?
- Foreign Service Officers work. A lot. Visa officers aside, most of the embassy is putting in 60 hour work weeks. (The advantage of visa officers is that you get to speak to a whole lot of people and go home at 5, pretty good if your goal is getting to know a country.)
- Ex-pats are always really excited to meet other ex-pats, making it easy to fall into hanging out with Americans wherever you may be assigned.
- Embassies are really good at helping you out. You get a social sponsor, maintenance, and, often times, a reasonably busy social calendar just for arriving. That’s good for fighting homesickness and boredom, but most good experiences seem to come from boredom and misadventures, at least in my experience.
If you missed it, yesterday I posted on 10 tips to better use your time abroad to travel, so go back and read them if I’ve made you depressed. check back tomorrow for the Spring Break wrap up!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Yay, I’m famous!
Regarding visa officers… speak for yourself. I’m doing a straight consular tour, and we’re working 70 hours a week in my section. Then again, there’s not much to do in country. We’re isolated from the populace by the host country’s wishes and by our own security restrictions.
We make up for it by having an unusually strong community with other embassies in our neighborhood. I know it’s not the ideal - going to the Middle East to hang out with Western European diplomats - but it’s better than having a 100% overlap between your office and your social scene.
Entry level officers may get off at 5pm if they are not in visa mill posts, but the more senior ConOffs never get off that early. Most especially if they are doing accountable stuff.