Every time I reach the point where it seems appropriate to complain in a public forum, I get what I want just a few days later. Almost immediately after wondering out loud why I hadn't made it onto the register yet, I learned that I had.
What this means in practical terms is that there is no impediment to starting my career as a diplomat - except for all of those other candidates who earned higher scores at the oral assessment, that is. The list is rank ordered based on raw oral assessment score, plus whatever bonuses you might earn from languages skills or military service.
My score on the oral assessment wasn't anything flashy, so I'm pretty far down the list. Throughout the summer, the number of candidates waiting on the registers has been growing faster than State has been able to hire them. If this keeps up, I don't like my odds. Luckily, I saw this coming and, round about this time last year, started studying Modern Standard Arabic. The foreign service badly needs Arabic speakers, and to recruit them, offers an enormous register boost to anyone who can pass a phone exam. The effect is big enough that even someone with the lowest possible passing score on the oral exam would be assured an offer if only they pass the Arabic test.
This is essentially where I am now. It's all in my hands - learn the language, and I can rest assured that when my clerkship ends in August, I'll be on my way to Washington. Fail, and I have only myself to blame. This is why I've doubled my tutoring hours to eight hour-long speaking sessions per week. At 7:00 every morning, I'm on the phone with my tutors in Cairo. Same thing, but for two hours, on the weekends. Fridays, thank Jebus, are free. In between lessons, flashcards, podcasts, al Jazeera, halaal carts or anything else that might help. Even Ms. C has started learning the language in a show of support. First try at the test will be at the end of December and then, practically, I'll have one more shot sometime in June before I have to start looking for an alternative, post-clerkship job. I'm already feeling the pressure.
I wonder what might happened if I'd put this kind of energy into any other aspect of my life over the previous thirty years? Never too late to grow up, I guess.
