Last week marked the eighth consecutive week of summer tradecraft training that bridged the end of my tour in Children’s Issues to the start of Burmese language studies. It also marked the final week.
My summer of training was in the works since the beginning of 2024. When planning my departure from Children’s Issues (CI), I’d realized I would have a three-month gap between the end of the tour and the start of Burmese. (Almost all long-term language classes begin after Labor Day. This is convenient for officers returning from overseas and needing to fit in home leave, but home leave doesn’t apply to a domestic-to-overseas PCS.)
It’s the officer’s responsibility to research. plan out, and request the training needed for an onward assignment, as well as figure out any details around timing.
I agreed to stay one month past my transfer eligibility date (TED) in CI. Leaving in June rather than May helped fill a training gap for me and a staffing gap for CI – my position sadly didn’t get a handshake during the prior year’s bid season and is still vacant. (Working on international parental child abductions is important work – I promise!)
Initially I also had been hoping to serve on a promotion panel. Promotion panels convene for several weeks in-person each summer to review EERs. Service is helpful to the Department and to officers seeking deeper insight into the Department’s promotion system. During the heavy PCS and home leave season – where many who would’ve otherwise volunteered are not in town – I thought I had a good shot coming out of a domestic tour with no travel in sight. However, my availability ended up ill-matched to the panel slot I was eligible for.
So instead I focused on maxing out my eight weeks with consular and other tradecraft training. By the time Burmese ends in summer 2025, it will be nearly time to depart for Rangoon. Therefore, this summer was really the time to jam in as much as possible.
As I wrote about in my Back to School post, after returning from my west coast trip to visit family in early July, I took three weeklong midlevel consular manager trainings focused on fraud, visa matters, and American Citizens Services.
In addition, during week four I cobbled together a few short in-person and distance learning courses to form a week of consular section management issues, financial planning, and retirement.
During the fifth week I took another in-person weeklong consular managerial class, and during the sixth week I took an entirely remote data literacy course.
Also during week six, two old friends of mine from my Peace Corps Volunteer service in Macedonia were in town – one from Seattle and the other from Geneva. Being off early each day allowed us to meet up twice. The possibility of staying home on my computer and avoiding commuting was just icing on the cake: a flashback to the good old days of 2022 and 2023 when I worked remotely 60-80% of the time. I may have taken it for granted!
During the past two weeks I attended Southeast Asia area studies, focused on a broad overview of the ASEAN region: Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, and East Timor.
Last week, area studies’ focus narrowed to mainland (vs. maritime) Southeast Asia, drilling down in more detail on Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Both weeks were a useful orientation to a region that I’ve little knowledge of, save living twice in Australia and traveling for tourism to Thailand and Malaysia.
Coming back to FSI full-time in-person was not as rough as I thought it might be. Commuting and traffic in northern Virginia suck, of course, and there were days I was tired from insomnia or cranky after being around too many people. I got behind on my vitamins and workouts and didn’t manage everything perfectly.
But mostly my concern was a nothingburger. The return on investment for putting up with all of the above was being able to fully dedicate myself to paying attention to the topic at hand and benefit from interactions with classmates, rather than struggling to pay attention in the oddness of the hybrid or remote environments.
It was great to be back on campus, especially while I was outside on lunch breaks. I even diligently avoided getting a cold or any other illness. I guess we will see what happens with a predicted 650 additional students returning to campus for language classes as fall (and flu season) approaches.
Collecting Postcards 
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