Waiting for "The Call"

The good thing about having such a screwy internal clock due to rotating shifts is that I can wake up in the wee hours of the morning and get things done. Like this.

I currently subscribe to a Yahoo group for people like me who have passed all the hurdles to become Foreign Service Officers. We sit around idly, waiting for "The Call," which is actually "The Email" that offers us a position in the next batch of new FSOs. In the few years since Secretary Powell's tenure as SecState, the lists of eligible hires have increased in length. These lists are called the registers, and there is one register for each of the FSO career tracks, or "cones." Those career tracks are Consular, Public Diplomacy, Political, Economic, and Management. I am a Consular candidate. I figured consular work fit my specific skill set and experience the best, and somewhere along the line, someone at State apparently agreed with me, because here I sit on the Yahoo group, commiserating and reading tea leaves with the rest of the hopefuls.

Once on the register, a candidate "ages off" after 18 months, so getting hired is a time-sensitive thing. Lately, hiring trends have caused the registers to shrink, which makes me rather optimistic about my chances.

The Yahoo site is all abuzz right now, because State has done something that hasn't happened since Secretary Powell brought in loads of new FSOs during his Diplomatic Readiness Initiative. They are having a November class! Normally, A-100 classes (the name of the orientation course for new FSOs) are in January, March, May, July, and September. Most of us had hunkered down for the fall after the calls went out for the September class, knowing that there would not be another class until January. Needless to say, the tea leaves have now come out again. Personally, I am hoping for a call for the March or May class. If hiring trends continue, then my ranking on the register might just be sufficient for a call for one of those dates.