I learned a lot in eight weeks of training. The first brush that most of us had with the reality of Foreign Service life came during the assignment process. That's when you realize that you'll be spending your first tour as vice consul in Nuevo Laredo rather than as staff aide in Paris. It's a field that most choose either to disparage or to ignore. He was lost and couldn't find his way out of the building.
Consular officers do the dirty work of U.S. diplomacy.
More often than not the work is as grueling and thankless as it is necessary. Problem is, the Department's dismissive attitude toward its consular officers encourages FSOs to view their work as something to be endured and then forgotten. Look, for example, at the relatively small number of ambassadors who come from the consular cone. Besides consular work, a junior officer also plays shepherd to official visitors, some more legitimate than others. If you don't spend it this year, the logic goes, you won't get it the next.