Organization is key!
Our Foreign Service Orientation class keeps sending us home with new folders of information every day. I almost feel like I need a folder for my folders. I've got one for medical insurance, several for education and additional training, one for transitioning between posts, one for paperwork on how to properly prepare paperwork, and probably a dozen pages that don't fit anywhere else that I keep shuffling through random folders while hoping that they will magically assemble themselves into a coherently themed folder.
Most of my classmates submitted their bid lists earlier in the week. However, my specialty normally doesn't go overseas until the second tour, so we didn't get a bid list. I like to think that we're the "special specialists" because of that. Even though a domestic assignment in the Foreign Service sounds a bit odd, it does give us the opportunity to learn how the State Department operates in D.C. before going overseas. So we got that going for us, which is nice. However, it also means that we have to scramble to find housing immediately after orientation so that we have a roof over our heads before our per diem runs out. Which I can't help but find a bit ironic, since construction engineers are responsible for (among other things) putting roofs over other peoples' heads.
Most of my classmates submitted their bid lists earlier in the week. However, my specialty normally doesn't go overseas until the second tour, so we didn't get a bid list. I like to think that we're the "special specialists" because of that. Even though a domestic assignment in the Foreign Service sounds a bit odd, it does give us the opportunity to learn how the State Department operates in D.C. before going overseas. So we got that going for us, which is nice. However, it also means that we have to scramble to find housing immediately after orientation so that we have a roof over our heads before our per diem runs out. Which I can't help but find a bit ironic, since construction engineers are responsible for (among other things) putting roofs over other peoples' heads.
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