Core Skills Rotations--Be Still, My Beating Heart!

This is when A-100 gets exciting. Well, it's actually been exciting all along, but this week is one of the best. First of all, because it starts with our first holiday. It's Columbus Day to feds who have the day off, aka Discoverer's Day to folks in Hawaii, but it's also Thanksgiving Day to our friends up north. For me it's an extra day to have procrastinated on preparing my "speech." That's the exciting part of this week's orientation. We have Core Skills Rotations. That's fancy talk for breaking into smaller groups, occupying different rooms than our home sweet home for the last 4 weeks, and not just sitting there like baby birds with our mouths open. The 4 days of core skills started on Friday with Composure Under Fire, a simulation with about 10 classmates of answering tough questions in tough situations. I was representing a newbie at the embassy in a South American city and had to field questions from a group that had been protesting U.S. policy outside the embassy just moments before. Whew!

Another highlight of the week is public speaking, in which each of us gives a 5-minute talk to an imagined audience at an embassy about something related to our job. I'm up tomorrow so drafting that talk is on today's agenda. They'll videotape our talks and give us pointers, playing back the best and "most-improvable" sections for us, in front of all our peers, of course. Can't wait!

There are a number of other, less intimidating sessions sprinkled throughout the week as well. The finale for the week is flag day. Finally. You'd think we'd all be sick of talking about our most desired posts, what the pet restrictions are in various countries, and how we prioritized our bid lists, but you'd be wrong. The first move away from D.C. feels like when the job really starts, even though many of us could be here close to a year for language and job training. Another reason many of us, including me, are thrilled is that our far-flung spouses are coming to town to share the delight or despair that day. D arrives Thursday; yea!!