Category: Foreign Service Officer

It has been almost four months since I joined the Department of Foreign Affairs. Originally, I planned to publish an entry after my second month, but I became so overwhelmed with office work that I couldn’t even consider pausing to write a proper blog entry. Also, thank goodness my thoughts remained as mental notes. I now realize that many of my initial observations as a new officer are more nuanced than apparent and I would have been embarrassed had I actually posted them without ripened reflection and instructive conversations with more senior colleagues.

Often, I hesitate to even write about my experiences at all this early in the job, consciously avoiding sounding pretentious. But I realize there is value in memorializing some thoughts and feelings for me to look back on years later. 

The first observation is that the lives of foreign service officers and staff are very transitory. We are programmed to only stay in the home office three years before deployment to a foreign post for the next six, then be recalled back to Manila for the next three years before another deployment abroad in the next six–until retirement. Such is the regular turnaround of staff that no one normally stays in Manila for more than three years. In the past four months I’ve been with the maritime office, at least four colleagues have left for their foreign assignments. The transition of institutional memory, expertise, and processes is thus always a challenge. I am now increasingly no longer eligible to claim my being new to the job as an excuse not to be familiar with issues and affairs that have been going on for years. But it truly is my most frequent struggle–being expected and demanded to know what I should be doing when I sincerely have barely an idea of what’s supposed to happen or how things are expected to be done. I try my best, but there’s always room for much improvement.

There were weeks when the pressure and expectation were so intense that I entertained the thought of lighting up a cigarette for the first time after almost a decade from quitting, just to grasp at something to calm my nerves. I had to dig deep for motivation as to why I keep up with the demands on some days. Occasionally these feelings get polluted with the regret of what I could be doing right now had I stayed in France and sought employment in a law firm in Paris instead. Eventually I am reminded that this new career is more than just one bad day (or several miserable weeks) at work, and I recall what a boss had said about looking at the national flag to remind oneself of the ideals that made one choose this career.

Officers are made of stern material. Tempered steel does not reach its durability without going through the furnace, so face the heat I will.

My second realization stems from the first. Since many staff and officers’ deployment-and-recall rotations don’t intersect, it is likely that one will rarely or even almost never personally come across colleagues across the foreign service and the only way one will get to know of people (and be known by people) is through one’s reputation passed around by word of mouth in office pantries, group chats, and other social conversations. “Reputation is your currency” illustrates the idea that how people in the Department perceive you will be indicative of one’s fate in the service. This early I’ve been the recipient of many unsolicited stories of others–it makes me very concerned how people will talk about (or have already judged) me as a junior officer.

Among the most consistent pieces of advice I received from colleagues and seniors when I entered the service is to avoid social media–if not quit it altogether. In fact, among the first documents I received on my first day was the Department’s social media policy–which was reasonable. But for someone who has kept a blog and an online presence since 2000 (22 years ago now), this is a challenge because my digital footprint is everywhere. One time I was called out by a colleague because someone in the Department apparently found a tweet distasteful and warned me to be careful. The tweet in question seemed like a benign comment during a workshop I had attended, but it was enough to raise concerns and ring a bell somewhere.

My life is an open book, in this case–an open blog. Part of my reputation is beyond my control, especially those traces of me that have been immortalized in the annals of cached webpages. For things past, I no longer have the time nor the patience to curate what I had posted or written for over two decades–I am who I am, I was who I was, I said what I said–the only way I know is forward and to do better where improvement is necessary.

Having said this, I now knowingly take the risk of publishing these thoughts of a four-month-old FSO trying to navigate his new life in the Philippine foreign service.