Generation after generation thousands of us have joined the Foreign Service for thousands of different reasons. Below six Foreign Service Officers of different generations, active duty and retired, describe why they wanted a career in the Foreign Service and how they joined. This is the first installment.
We plan on many more. Foreign Service Officers, both active duty and retirees, are invited to e-mail their own accounts to mhornblow aol. We request that all accounts be from one to five pages long and include at the end a brief two or three sentence biographic sketch.
We would also appreciate receiving via e-mail a photograph that we could use with the biographic sketch. We suspect that many of our readers are considering a Foreign Service career. We hope these accounts will be helpful to them and of interest to others. Before the internet and cable TV, there were atlases and National Geographic. One of my favorite pastimes as a kid was poring over these wondrous repositories of exotic information, committing to memory the capitals and flag designs of all the UN countries, and imagining populations and elevations, cultures and languages, imports and exports.
I wondered what it would be like to be a native of these countries, or to go there as a visitor. I wondered if it was possible to make a living doing it. In I was about to enter high school and John Kennedy was elected President. Like many of my generation, I was inspired by his enthusiasm and by his commitment and confidence that the U. His focus on international issues plus my innate interest in foreign places led me to write to the State Department to ask what one needed to do to become a diplomat.
I was also influenced by a wonderful high school teacher, who encouraged me to look beyond the narrow confines of rural Connecticut where I grew up, and to envisage a role for myself on the international stage.
