Oral Assessment prep session

I'm here in Chicago, happy to watch the cold snowy weather from inside my warm hotel room. On Wednesday I arrived in Chicago and went straight to my Oral Assessment prep session. I'm really glad I went. It was great meeting others who are preparing and I really enjoyed meeting the Ambassador in residence. I do have to say, I feel both better informed and more intimidated. I feel confident I now know what I need to do to prepare effectively, which is a good thing too because my assessment is less than 3 weeks away! But at the same time, I feel a little intimidated. The Foreign Service has high standards, rightly so, and that means some additional pressure to do my best. Additionally, I think it's really hitting me that I might get in. And that thought is both exciting and scary. So needless to say, I have a lot on my mind. But at times like this, the best thing to do is to focus on what I need to do and on doing my best. See you next in DC!

3 1/2 months

So I was bad and forgot to update the blog on my signing up for the Oral Assessment. Fall is always super busy for me and I got distracted. But enough about that. Registration for the Oral Assessment opened on Sept. 28th and I decided to wait until I got home from work to sign up. Little did I realize that I was the only one waiting. In 9 hours all the assessment slots for November, December, and even most of January were already taken. Sigh. I was hoping to get a slot in December. On the bright side, this will give me more time to prepare. I'm all signed up, booked my flight, and even found a hotel within walking distance of the test site. I'm even looking forward to meeting up with some friends in DC while I'm there. January 27th is the magic day so I better work hard so that I can do my best!

Personal Narrative

So I have just completed and submitted the answers to my personal narrative. Wow, that strained the brain a little bit. The questions basically assess whether you can provide examples of times when you exhibited certain behavioral traits that are essential to being a Foreign Service Officer. It sounds easy at first, until you realize you have provide current contact information for someone who can verify your examples. I found myself having to reject some examples that came to mind because I did not have current contact information for anyone who could confirm it. That's a big reminder of how important it is to network and keep in contact with the people you meet.

However, I found that once I determined what my examples would be and confirmed I had current contact information, the rest feel into place. I tend to be a succinct writer, as the length of my blog posts will attest, so I never ran out of room for my answers. I just hope I was descriptive enough and provided enough variety in circumstances to show a good range of my abilities.

Now I will have to be patient and wait until October to find out if I will be invited to the Oral assessment. I just hope that I impress the QEP and that I compare favorably to the rest of the Management track candidates. For now though, I will continue to prepare in the event that I do move forward in the process.

One down, one to go

So the good news is that last Friday I passed the PHR!!!!!! I've been really stressed out and focused on studying, which is part of the reason why I haven't been blogging here lately.

What really tweaked me out though was that on 4/29/09 I signed up for a time slot for the FSOT! June 6th is the magic date! Which means that I have one month left to prepare! Ok, let me just stop hyperventilating and I'll be good, I promise.

Hello 2009

It is the new year and I know it will go by fast. I have decided that I will sign up for the FSOT testing window for October of this year. That means I have a lot of preparations to make in about 10 months. Yikes.

This is earlier than I was planning on taking the test because I wanted to give myself more time to prepare. I'm sure that to a certain extent I am overly worried about my abilities. However, I would rather be over prepared for the test than under prepared and fail horribly. But if I don't pass, I can still take it the following year. I lose nothing by taking the test this year and probably have a lot more to gain.

So with my goal set I have a bunch of things I need to get done. Please look forward to posts on that later this month. And no, I'm not making these resolutions, I hate making resolutions.