Newly minted diplomats.

The ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for my A-100 class happened last Friday. Quite frankly, the last two weeks have been a blur and I have finally depressurized to the point that I feel like writing anything. At the ceremony, our keynote speaker was Under Secretary Burns (U/S for Political Affairs). I got to speak to him briefly a couple weeks ago when he gave a presentation to our class over at the Truman Building. I mentioned to him that my old band director from The Citadel tried to encourage me to go into the Navy or Marine Corps as a musician, but since I ultimately wound up in the Foreign Service, I could be considered one less military musician at DoD and one additional diplomat at DoS. (There is an old joke about the comparative sizes of the Departments of Defense and State. It is said that DoD has more musicians than DoS has employees.)

The big treat at our ceremony was the appearance of Ambassador Lawrence Eagleburger. Ambassador Eagleburger is the only FSO to serve as Secretary of State (under George H.W. Bush). I am a relative newcomer to State, and was not all that familiar with him prior to the announcement that he would be swearing us in, but he is quite the rock star amongst the more senior crowd at State. All the ambassadors and Under Secretary Burns seemed thrilled to see him. He was quite the character, too. As it turns out, we have an Eagleburger in our A-100 class who wrote him a letter a few weeks prior to the ceremony, mentioning that she had just learned about him and was intrigued at their shared surname. Apparently Ambassador Eagleburger was intrigued too, because he decided to come swear us in.

Now here I am almost a week later, studying to become a Consular Officer. It seems like a month ago that I was in the sheltering nest of A-100 even though it was just a few days. So many of us have gone our separate ways. Some will be leaving for post this June. Some of us will wait as long as April and May 2010 to depart after language training and other courses. I'll be heading out in February 2010. There are happy hours and outings planned in the near future, but I think it is safe to say that swearing in was the last time we would all be together in one place.