US Foreign Service Exam

[howeird]

Next Saturday I will be spending about 8 hours of Quality Time with a handful of #2 pencils and a black-ink ball point pen at SJSU, taking the State Department's foreign service exam. I signed up for it a couple of months ago under the mistaken impression that this was the prerequisite for landing any kind of overseas job with State. I have since learned that IT professionals actually apply for individual jobs posted on the department's web site, but since I've signed up, and it's free, I figured what the heck, let's see where this takes me.

If I pass the test, I will be invited to SF to participate in the oral assessment process. This is billed as needing about 10.5 hours of the candidate's time. Looking at the web site it is a truly daunting exam - one wonders how, if this is what all FS officers have to go through, US foreign policy can have ever gotten as effed up as it is today.

Check it out here.