Want to join the Foreign Service? Advice from a "public diplomacy" diplomat

Dear Ms. [...]:

... I'll try to answer your question re preparing to join the Foreign Service [FS] as best I can:

1. Don't daydream about joining the FS by cramming to "pass the FS exam." Before trying to "become a diplomat," please consider this: live overseas, learn a foreign language(s) and read history. All this takes time, not instant "exam-preparation-gratification."

2. Graduate-level courses in "public diplomacy" can do you no harm (expect if you have to pay for them), but remember that there are no fool (full?)-proof guides to PD. It's essentially learned by experience in the field rather than by "stimulated (simulated?) situations" in the classroom.

3. Be aware that public diplomacy, as implemented by the State Department, is an official US Government function, for better or for worse. So, if you wish to be an FSO [Foreign Service Officer], be psychologically ready for the endless embassy "staff meetings," "getting along with colleagues," side of the FS life, which (if my biases are not completely off target) is really what is most "tested" on the FS oral exam (or at least when I took it, too many decades ago).

4. Keep up with foreign affairs as best you can by reading major dailies and magazines, if only to "fake" -- please find a better word -- your way through the FS written exam, again as I experienced it. (After all, knowledge is a life-long search, with no one ever really knowing the automatically "right answer.")

5. Leave your options -- and sense of humor -- open. There’s life (far more financially profitable but perhaps far less rewarding) before, during, and beyond the FS.

6. Most important: remember the Foreign Service is a service -- a service to your country as you -- and (unfortunately) as circumstances allow -- can best carry it out.

best, john