I passed the FSOA!

This post is going to be long, but the day was pretty long too.

When I went to bed on Sunday night it was snowing lightly and I was worried that the government might close and I would have to reschedule for a much later date. At about 3am, someone started snow blowing the sidewalk around the building across the street. That, combined with the noisy wind and the heater clicking on and off, made it pretty impossible to sleep, so I got up. The fantastic Noelle, who lives near by and works for the State Department (in the same building where I would take my assessment), picked me up at six in the morning and drove me into the assessment, in the snow, on a day when she could have come in for work two hours late. Of course, it was all made worthwhile by seeing the crazy man running across the Memorial Bridge at 6:30am, in the snow, while wearing shorts. Both of our mouths fell open when we saw him. He noticed our gaping and gave us this look and a shrug that said: “what are YOU staring at – this is no big deal.” That sight made me forget about the assessment for a few minutes.

I was the second person to arrive that morning. A total of nine people (6 men, 3 women) tested that day, and 8 of us were there on time, despite the snow. The final person showed up before the introductions, so she was okay to test with us. I really wish I could remember everyone’s cone, but from what I recall, the group was mainly consular, but there were some political as well. While we were waiting to begin, another candidate called to see if the test was still on and starting on time (since the government had given a two hours late start that day to everyone else). When told that we would be starting on time, she asked if she could reschedule as she would not be able to make it due to the snow (her cab never showed up). She was coming from Georgetown. I don’t know if she’ll be able to reschedule, the program assistants definitely had a raised eyebrow since she would be coming from the shortest distance, but couldn’t make it due to the weather. I tend to agree with them. Nine of us were able to make it that morning, including one candidate who had to walk a good ways because her cab didn’t show up. Also, I used to live the apartment complex that houses State Department Annex 1 and walked to Georgetown several times when there. She could have gotten on her goulashes and hoofed it. I can understand why she might not want to arrive cold, wet and out of breath, but it could be done. I suppose the moral of the story is, if the weather’s bad, get there even earlier. The gentleman who gave us our introduction for the day even commented that they could tell that we really wanted to be there that day because we were there despite the bad weather.

The group exercise is the section I did not pass. Since it’s not State’s policy to provide feedback and scores for the individual sections, I’ll just give myself a quick critique and make a lot of guesses. I think my presentation is what did me in. It could have been a bit better organized, and I could have presented it, and myself better. I think I was speaking a little too slowly and deliberately, and this cost me points for oral communication. It is also possible that I was not speaking loudly enough during the presentation (sorry Bill!). I think I didn’t really find my voice until the deliberation (I actually noticed that I had turned up the volume during this phase of the exercise). There were only 4 people in my group and I think this worked in our favor as far as coming to a consensus was concerned, because we were all almost on the same wavelength as to what projects we liked and wanted to fund (yay for ‘working with others’ points). However, because we were primarily in agreement from the start, we did not vocalize WHY we decided what we decided as much as we should have. So we may have missed some more points here for quantitative analysis. We should have spent more time in discussion, but instead, we finished about five minutes early!

I did pass the case management/written exercise. THIS was an interesting experience. The exercise itself was a good one for me, especially since I had done some of the practice exercises on the FSOA Yahoo! Group in preparation. I started drafting my memo and making notes in the Word document as soon as I opened the folder, and even wrote a few lines in conclusion in case I ran out of time towards the end. I made my recommendations in the opening paragraph and spent the rest of the memo supporting them. About half way through writing the bulk of the memo, something strange happened. The letters on my keyboard stopped corresponding with the letters that were coming up on the screen. I did a few double takes, deleted and re-wrote what I wanted a few time, then tried hitting ‘undo’ in Word to see if it was related to the software. Since this didn’t help, I concluded that I had hit some odd sequence of keys and changed the keyboard format. We still had some time, so I left the room to find help. I went down the hallway and knocked on the door on the end (it was ajar). There was no answer so I stuck my head in and said ‘hello’ a few times. Again, there was no answer (I think a lot of people took unscheduled leave due to the snow). I did not want to spend any more time looking for help, so I went back to the room and finished writing my memo by hand. I finished writing just barely under the time limit, but I did not have time to go back and delete my typed notes or do any review. When the program assistant came back, I explained the situation. Her eyes got really wide and told me I should have asked for help. I told her that I tried, but I did finish the memo by hand, and that the first part was typed, the rest was hand written. She told me that I should have gone to another computer and that she didn’t know what they were going to do about me. I just kept smiling and said that yes, that would have been a good idea, but that there was nothing to do about it now. She left the room to find out what was to be done about my case management exercise and when she came back, she said that they would just have to look at the hand written part. I smiled again and thanked her, then showed her how the different parts matched up. As the rest of the group learned of what happened, they congratulated me for keeping my cool – some of them didn’t even notice that I had left the room! We all agreed that even if my memo wasn’t as good as it could have been, the examiners would take my situation into account, and maybe would get a few extra points for the composure and resourcefulness dimensions! I ended up passing this section (I do think I had a good memo, even if I didn’t get a chance to polish it), so maybe we were right.

After lunch (where Noelle brought me a cookie, because she’s awesome), I was scheduled to take the structured interview (which I also passed). While I felt nervous before the interview started, I think it was mainly because the day was almost over, and I just wanted to be done with it. Waiting in a room by myself for several minutes before the examiners entered probably had something to do with it. I think this section was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but the hour definitely flew by. Working with the study group definitely helped me pass, as did my preparation for linking my experiences to the thirteen dimensions. I definitely avoided many “um’s”, “ah’s” and “you know’s”, but I do think I fumbled a little bit with re-wording my experiences to answer the specific questions given, especially during the experience and motivation section. Most of my examples had been geared toward the past behavioral questions, so I think I had a little trouble turning them into ‘experience and motivation’ questions. I think the hypothetical section went relatively well, however, I started thinking out loud at one point, and ended up having to back up and explain why I wouldn’t go down one path I had started on, instead of simply saying what I would have done. However, I think that retracing my steps was still better than continuing along a path I felt was wrong. I think I did well in the past behavioral section, even though I started rambling a bit on the first one. I should have definitely kept that shorter. When they asked me if I had anything to add, I just said that I was happy to be there and I thanked them for coming in to administer the test despite the bad weather – especially when they could have taken unscheduled leave that day.

Then came the wait. I tried to keep everyone’s spirits up – but I hope I didn’t cross the line to annoying. We were all pretty quiet and no one seemed interested in the playing cards I brought. One candidate was left to do his structured interview, and he was still in there when the second group to do the written exercise was finished and joined our wait. Ordinarily, we would have waited until 3:45 for them to announce our results. However, at 3pm, as soon as the last candidate finished, we were told to take any last minute bathroom breaks we needed. About five minutes later, we were led to the writing room and waited there. The first person called out was from my group. We a few more minutes, then I was called. I was led to a room and asked to stand to the side along the wall. A few seconds later, one of my group members joined me, then the other. All three of us had passed! The examiners apologized for the mishap with my computer during the case management section, apparently, someone had requested a different keyboard configuration, which they had set on the computer I used. Then I accidentally used some combination of keys to change the settings. At this point, I didn’t care because I had passed! The rest was a bit of a daze, we were told what to expect next, had some questions answered, the examiners passed along some wisdom from their own experiences and some encouraging information. They said that this is probably the best time in a decade to take the exam and go through the process because they are trying to hire many more FSOs.

As we were filling out paperwork for diplomatic security, the two other ladies from the other group came out. They did not pass. Eventually, after I had been finger printed, the rest of the passers from the other group came out. A total of six candidates passed yesterday, five men and me. I am pretty sure we were all in our twenties (well, VERY late twenties in my case) or early thirties – one passing (consular) candidate was in his senior year of college. Most of us were there at the oral assessment for the first time, one candidate had taken it several years ago, while in college.

My score was not as high as I had wanted it to be: 5.3. However, it’s still a passing score, which is what really matters, especially since many FSO’s don’t pass their first time at the oral assessment. I’ll get into what comes next and just how long this whole process takes (maybe another YEAR!) in another post, this one is much too long.

Tags: Foreign Service Exam, FSOA