Yes!
I took to Oral Assessment today and passed! I thought I hadn’t done so well on the structured interview, but, I passed all three sections and got a final score that sounds decent enough to be proud of it. Now, I just need to slow down the process enough to get through my degree before they actually offer me a slot. It would be ideal to get an August 2010 class, to give me some time in the Summer to go do some hiking in the mountains before I became a real, bone fide diplomat in training, but … I should simply be happy to have the prospect of a job. I just need to square away the security and medical clearance paperwork, as well as veteran’s preference.
Monday is the big day. I have my Oral Exam at the State Department. It all starts at 7am. By late afternoon, I will know whether I made the cut for the Obama/Clinton Foreign Service Team.
I spent most of this week coming my records for old addresses and tightening up my statement of interest for the Foreign Service. You get a page to state why you want to join the Foreign Service. For me, it boils down to public service, work overseas, and working on some of the most important and critical issues the country and the world have faced.
I have a hotel for Sunday night – one about 1/2 mile from the State Department Building, which will make it easier to arrive by 7am. Although, I’d like the exam to be over and I’d like to know I’m in, I’m going to enjoy the weekend hanging out with Chris, Michelle & their new baby, Baby J, as well as my sister and family when they come up for the day.
More to post on Monday.
I posted this originally on my Afghanistan Project Team’s site (igid.deveer.org), but have put it here, too. The background for the post is that my team and I wrote a paper that recommended increasing funding to USAID’s Alternative Development Program and Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Program initiative. The goal is to give a majority of the Afghani population viable economic alternatives to the illicit opium industry and, over the long-term, decrease corruption. Now read the rest of the post:
Despite having written our paper, a recent USAID report states that the Afghan government is still corrupt, despite years of effort in fighting corruption. Laura Freschi wrote in an Aid Watch blog post that asks some interesting questions about the USAID recommendations:
“Could USAID explain how concerted efforts are failing to defeat corruption as a whole when each individual project is successfully meeting its targets?”
“One of the six recommendations for future action in the report is to provide more resources and support for the High Office of Oversight (HOO), the anti-corruption agency which has until now has shown an “apparent unwillingness” to go after high-level corruption. The report notes that “often the officials and agencies that are supposed to be part of the solution to corruption are instead a critical part of the corruption syndrome.” How is the solution to aid money being stolen to give additional aid money to those who are stealing it?” [bold, my emphasis]
With respect to our project, both USAID and our team recommend: the coordination of donors and focusing anti-corruption efforts on issues Afghan citizens care about. We depart from the USAID report’s focus on governance issues and instead recommend increased funding for livelihood programs that reduce Afghan citizen’s dependence on the illicit opium economy. Freschi’s (bold) question still applies to our recommendation, how do we minimize the stealing from our program as we increase funding for it?
I would be interested to see discussion of corruption in the programs we recommend increasing funding for – Community Development Council program in the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and the Alternative Development.
Sources:
