Midpoint Breakthrough: Learning Burmese, Weeks 21-23

As we reached the halfway point of our 44-week Burmese course recently, I felt an increasing awareness that significant changes lie ahead. I’ve also felt a renewed determination to meet the challenges of our important work. [Author’s note: I wrote and edited this post two weeks ago, before the State Department news of a personnel Reduction-in-Force was reported by the press.]

The past few weeks have been a period of transition as a new presidential administration takes office. This marks the fifth presidential administration under which I’ve served during my federal career that spans three agencies, five different countries, and over 19 years. I’ve witnessed periods of stocktaking, policy change, and shifting priorities in the past — each a little different.

For many, regardless of personal political beliefs, this transition comes at a time that feels turbulent both on a societal and personal level.

In early January, a snowstorm shut down the DC area, while wildfires simultaneously ravaged my home state of California. Then, a devastating plane crash at Reagan—just 15 minutes from my house—claimed dozens of lives. The month ended with the accidental death of my cousin in California. He was a beloved son, brother, husband, father, nephew, and friend. He was two years older than I am now.

People are struggling. Struggling to buy gas and groceries and to pay their bills. Struggling with social media, anxiety, mental health, loneliness, and other invisible challenges. Struggling with concerns: about our country, our families and friends, and our jobs. Struggling with how to make sense of the global and domestic landscapes.

The financial, logistical, administrative, and professional uncertainty surrounding my upcoming Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move continues to intensify. Amidst the accelerated news cycle, long to-do lists, distractions aplenty, and flagging energy, I sit for five hours per day in a language class trying to learn Burmese.

Sometimes my mind is clear and I put together a smart statement on the fly. Sometimes I’m lucky to remember a word I just heard three times in a row.

It is not easy to spend 10 months learning a language to prepare for a one-year assignment. But then again, nothing about this career has been easy.

---

---

It isn’t easy to be in the Foreign Service at all. It isn’t easy to change jobs every two or three years and start climbing that steep learning curve at work and outside of work in a new country all over again.

It isn’t easy to live thousands of miles away from your loved ones for long stretches, missing births, weddings, funerals, and the myriad of beautiful, intangible moments that fall between the big events and make up this life.

It isn’t easy to take the losses that come with repeated PCS moves, like disruptions to your spouse’s career, and the time, energy, and money expended towards having to set up house over and over (and over) again.

It isn’t easy to expend your sharpest political acumen into a cable you send to Washington just hoping it makes it to a principal’s briefing book.

And it isn’t easy to provide consular services to U.S. citizens in trouble outside the United States, only to find out that some terrible situation befell them anyway, or that most of your fellow citizens don’t even understand what you do.

But no one said it would be easy. No one was under that illusion. FSOs know we will spend many years expected to function at a high level in environments that are not our own, in contexts that feel ambiguous, amidst circumstances that shift rapidly, and repeatedly.

We understand the job requires the highest standards of excellence, of composure, of critical thinking and problem solving. Of personal and professional resilience. And I would argue, perhaps most importantly, of intrinsic motivation — the thing that is everyone’s “why.” The thing that has kept me going through my very most challenging days.

With these components, we serve willingly, loyally, and with dedication, despite the difficulties. We land in a new country and head to the embassy on day one without hardly knowing where our socks, keys, or grocery stores are.

We give our best advice, and we try new things again and again until we get good at them.

We reach out to our most difficult interlocutors in the spirit of diplomacy and cooperation. As one of my senior colleagues used to hashtag-joke after one embarrassing moment or another during an overseas tour, “I represent you abroad.”

I represent YOU abroad.

Because — like my parents before me — I was a kid from a small town who didn’t go to an Ivy League school but still managed to make something great of my life with talent and grit and a bit of polish.

Because I watched the towers come down on 9/11 in a stunning indictment of the American way of life.

---

---

Because I will always believe that working “to form a more perfect Union” is the honor and responsibility of all citizens.

For that – and many other reasons – it is my honor to serve. As a public servant, I won’t give up: not on Burmese, not on the American taxpayer, and not on the mission.