PASSED!!

I PASSED THE FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICER TEST!!!

I haven't talked about it on here because I honestly didn't think I had ANY chance of passing.  I decided to take it at the last minute, so I only had a few weeks to study for it (and there are people out there that study for years for it!).  Fortunately, my political science education paid off!!!

For those of you who don't know what this means, the Foreign Service Officer Test is a standardized test that people interested in working in the foreign service (for American embassies overseas or for the State Department domestically) take.  No, this does not mean I'm leaving my current job or anything...the hiring process takes about a year and, even with the test passed, there's still several more phases to pass in order to even get on the hiring list.

Next, I have to complete six essays and submit those.  From what I've read, about a third of the people who are asked to do the essays are passed on to the next stage.  After that is the oral assessment (in Washington, DC).  If you pass the OA, you have to get a medical and security clearance, then you're added to "The Register" based on your OA score.  As jobs become available, they take people off of the register and assign them to the jobs based on their skills and scores!  If you haven't been called off of the register after a year, then you get to start the whole process over again.

So, even though there's still a ways to go, it's still super exciting to have gotten over the first hurdle!

And although this probably means nothing to anyone reading this (they base passing scores on t-scores, not your score-out-of-100 or anything like that), here are my individual results:
Job Knowledge: 52.13
Biographic Information: 61.06
English Expression: 55.93
Essay: 10