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.]
Tag: Courage
Rediscovery: Learning Burmese, Weeks 19-20
The past two weeks have been some of the most challenging since I began studying Burmese, largely due to feeling stuck in a prolonged rut. Struggling to recall vocabulary or make sense of syntax. Dreading the thought of leaving my warm bed to face the winter blues and drive to FSI. Feeling so drained that I fall asleep the moment I lie down, before forming a single memory.
Unexpected breaks from the routine—due to snow and illness—provided some relief, even though I was eager to get back to business as usual after the holidays. Yet, language learning continued to be a roller coaster of highs and lows for me.
Nearing the halfway point of this 44-week journey, I’ve solidified my determination to see it through, regardless of how much I think I suck at Burmese or even whether I ultimately pass. Looking back, I’ll likely view this stage as a pivotal point.
Winter Sun: Learning Burmese, Weeks 16-18
The Friday of week 16 in our 44-week Burmese course fell just before Christmas and brought our second progress evaluation. For me, the evaluation was a frustrating experience, the culmination of weeks of discouragement with my slowed progress since our class expanded from two students to four at varying levels.
I pretty much bombed my evaluation, despite intensively studying grammar, reviewing my thematic texts, and dedicating five hours before the evaluation to quiet practice and protecting my energy. By contrast, the effort I put into creating a memorable holiday for my family paid off, which is generally what I expect when I’ve worked tirelessly to achieve something.
Not on the Tip of My Tongue: Learning Burmese, Weeks 13-14
The cadence of the past two weeks has been unusually choppy, with several language classes disrupted by the Thanksgiving federal holiday, Area Studies, and an untimely bout of illness. These interruptions have contributed to my feeling lately that I can’t think of much to say in Burmese.
Suggested Tips for Language Study at FSI
Last month, I attended a seminar on study tips offered to current language students by the Foreign Service Institute’s (FSI) School of Language Studies (SLS). At any given point, hundreds of Foreign Service Officers are engaged in long-term language training at FSI. Successfully reaching the required scores for our overseas language-designated onward assignments is “the why.”
I’ve aggregated here some of my favorite language study tips from SLS consultants, fellow students, and my own experience. I’ve categorized them into two groups: strategy (what you do) and mindset (how you approach what you do), though the division is probably subjective. If you have a favorite tip for succeeding in FSI language study, feel free to add it in the comments!
Hamster Wheel: Learning Burmese, Week 4
Last week, we finished week four of the Burmese language course. We’re just one-eleventh of the way through (ha!), but I’m already acutely aware of the hamster wheel I’m running on.
Building a Foundation: Learning Burmese, Weeks 2-3
Week three of my 44-week Burmese class is drawing to a close. In this short time, we’ve progressed from hand-drawing consonants to reading strings of script, sounding out words we don’t know like kindergarteners. We’ve even written some little paragraphs on easy topics.
Into a Bigger Bowl: Learning Burmese, Week 1
Last Tuesday – after the Labor Day holiday – over 650 shiny new students with language-designated onward positions arrived at the Foreign Service Institute to begin language training. I was one of them.
Know the Signs
In addition to ending my fourth tour and traveling to the west coast to see family, I did two other important things in Washington, DC in June. I had an opportunity to march in the Capital Pride Parade as a volunteer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), and I went to a work-related training on atrocity prevention at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM).
Both the volunteer work and the training provided opportunities to reflect on important signs we may see that things are going wrong – before it’s too late.
Happy Centennial, Foreign Service
May 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the modern United States Foreign Service. It doesn’t mark the beginning of American diplomacy, which traces back to the beginning of our young union, but rather the passage of the Rogers Act of 1924. The Rogers Act, also known as the Foreign Service Act of 1924, joined the diplomatic and consular services of the United States. (Personnel of the former staffed embassies and legations around the world; the latter primarily promoted trade relations overseas and assisted distressed U.S. sailors – a precursor to today’s American Citizens Services consular work.)
The two services had evolved separately under former Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, and in merging them the provisions of the Rogers Act created a more merit-based Foreign Service. The new structure provided more reliable pay, a guaranteed rotation process to keep officers from “going native” in their countries of assignment (complete with mandated stateside home leave between foreign tours), and updated policies around officer selection, promotion, and retirement.
Distance Vision, Part II
In January, I wrote about having eye surgery during the first week of the new year to free myself from glasses and contact lenses. The procedure was called refractive lens exchange, or custom lens replacement (CLR, pronounced like the word “clear”).
In CLR, an ophthalmologist removes the natural lens behind the eye and replaces it with a synthetic interocular lens (IOL). The synthetic lens can never develop cataracts and is free of the age-related hardening and opacity a natural lens eventually experiences. CLR restores the eye’s original refractive ability. Therefore, depending on the kind of IOLs inserted – the patient no longer needs vision correction as a result.
Although CLR corrected my astigmatism as promised, it took a second procedure, LASIK, in mid-February to fine-tune the results and try to bring my close-up vision into focus.
Diplomacy 1, Hacker 0… Part II
In my previous blog post, I began to tell the March 2023 story of how a hacker took over my Facebook account. If you missed it, I recommend reading Part I at the link before reading Part II. At the end of Part I, I’d left my tale of woe on a cliffhanger after reaching out to the hacker who had gained access to my Facebook account and locked me out.
The hacker had changed the phone number associated with my account before the primary email address. So I’d been notified via email of his real phone number. It had a Nigerian country code, and I’d found the number active on WhatsApp. The location data Facebook had sent me associated with the new primary phone number for my account indicated the hacker was in Southern California using an iPhone 6S. I wasn’t sure if he was actually in California or perhaps in Nigeria using a VPN to obfuscate his location. I was inclined to think the latter, given his iPhone was about eight generations behind. But at that point, it didn’t really matter in practical terms. He was in and I was out. I had fallen for a dumb scam thinking I was talking to a friend I’d known since 1999 when in fact, it was a total stranger.
Weighing the risk he might try and extort or blackmail me against the fact Facebook had locked down my account and he couldn’t see my personal info anyway, I decided to see what would happen if I contacted him directly.
Diplomacy 1, Hacker 0… Part I
Recently I was talking with some colleagues at a happy hour about ‘pig butchering,’ one of the more nefarious financial scams to emerge from Asia in recent years. In the high-tech long con, a stranger grooms an unsuspecting target through social media or text messages to invest in cryptocurrency. Like fattening a pig for slaughter, the ‘friend’ gradually convinces the target to trust in the relationship enough to take investment advice. After some encouraging returns, the target’s confidence grows. But what the pig butchering victim believes is the beginning of a lucrative opportunity crumbles once they’ve sunk in the desired margin of cash, and the stranger they thought was their friend vanishes with their money.
Sounds dumb, right? Who responds to an unsolicited text or chat from someone they don’t know? Let alone becomes their friend, let alone then sends them money? I was surprised to find out how pervasive this has become.
Year in Review: 2023 Blog Stats and Recap
In 2023, I met my goal of writing fewer words more often. I published 40 posts, several on Foreign Service-related topics. I wrote a series on bidding for and receiving my fifth assignment. I expanded a popular post about FS Housing into a series. I also wrote two new installments of ‘Your Questions Answered.’ In what turned out to be a very road trip and family-oriented year, I made four trips to the west coast and back – three by car – and my mom and dad each visited us on the east coast. In 2022, I’d received a promotion, meaning I wouldn’t be eligible to be promoted again for two years; I enjoyed the professional sweet spot where I didn’t have to PCS, learn a new job, or compete for promotion. The year ended on a sad note: my family faced the death of my stepmother and learned the hard way about the limitations of the Medicare-funded hospice program in the United States.
Distance Vision
A couple of days into the new year, I had eye surgery in northern Virginia to permanently lessen my dependence on glasses and contacts.
Refractive lens exchange – – sometimes called custom lens replacement, clear lens replacement, or CLR (pronounced like “clear”) – – is an outpatient surgery that replaces the natural lens of your eye with an artificial interocular lens. Patients undergo in-depth testing and receive lenses tailored to their individual needs. The procedure stabilizes your vision, prevents you from developing cataracts in the future, and is supposed to correct for near-sightedness, far-sightedness, astigmatism, and reading prescriptions.
The jury’s still out on my up-close vision as my eyes heal and the swelling reduces, but so far my view to the horizon has been sharper than ever.
Collecting Postcards 