Testing Days

Just a silly reminisce. No great plot or moral. No daring do. No bulls, no guns, no terrorists.

I was recalling when I took the test for the Foreign Service. I was a grad student in Massachusetts at a small predominantly Jewish university in Waltham--Can you guess the name?--and doing what grad students do best, mooch off the system. I had a full-paid scholarship and a TA gig which left me with sufficient disposable income to live quite well. I could see, however, that the life of academia was not for me. Writing unreadable papers, and dealing with nineteen-year olds and Volvo-driving leftist Ivory Tower sorts forever and ever, well, that struck me as living like Prometheus, chained to a rock and having my liver eaten every day by a giant bird of prey.

I had just been notified that I had gotten a grant to study in Spain for a year or two to work on my never-finished PhD (note: I recently found a couple of chapters of it; it was horrible! The world of letters lost nothing when I abandoned the effort.) Walking by an office, I saw an advert with the very clever and attention-grabbing slogan, "Join the Foreign Service!" There was one mail-in card left and to qualify for the next test, December 4, 1976 (I think) it had to be postmarked that very day. I mailed it, and returned to my dissolute grad student ways.

Lo and Behold! A few weeks later I got my ticket for the exam. It would occur in downtown Boston at a prominent university. I put it aside and didn't think about it much. The date, however, rolled around, as dates are prone to do. The exam was at 8 am and all test takers had to be there early. The night before, as it is wont to do in Massachusetts, it had snowed a lot. The morning temperature was in the single digits. My 1970 Dodge Challenger was buried in the white stuff. I almost blew off the whole thing, but, in the end, dragged myself out of bed, grabbed a shovel, and dug away. The drive into Boston was slow and slick; I hate driving in snow! I eventually made it with thirty minutes to spare. I parked, and slipped and slid my way over to the auditorium to join several hundred nervous hopefuls, some babbling away about how this was their 900th time or so taking the test, and that it was impossible to pass, and was so unfair, etc. I was too groggy to be nervous, and only half-listened to the pompous exam monitor list all the things that would get us thrown out, e.g., talking, sharing, using a calculator, having hidden notes, etc. He added, for spite, I guess, that no more than ten percent of some 30,000 exam-takers nationwide would pass. The test got handed out: it was an SAT-type wherein you use your number 2 pencil to fill the little oval next to the letter of your answer.

The history section, I thought, was a breeze: a lot on the US which I knew well, and a good amount on post-WWII Europe and Asia, which I also knew well. The culture stuff was not hard; if you read Twain, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, etc., it was pretty easy. The geography portion, which my fellow test-takers had said was the toughest part, proved the easiest for me. That year it focussed on the geography of the Pacific and Asia. As an avid reader on the Pacific and Korean wars, I knew where those places were! The math part was mostly charts and interpreting stats, and not hard. I had taken lots of math and science as an undergrad. I left the test with a blah feeling, not worried, not enthused, just blah. Put it all out of my mind as I prepared to go to Spain.

About three or four months later, a short letter arrived telling me I had passed the written exam and needed to report for the second portion, the much-feared oral exam in which, again, at most only ten percent of those examined would pass. If I recall correctly the exam was in May of 1977; it was at the Boston Customs Tower. I arrived early, and got my first lesson in how government works. The examiners were late, very late. After some three hours, I got called into a large room. I was the last person they examined. I took a chair and faced a table with five tired FSOs.

These inquisitors began firing a barrage of what I considered weird questions: If you were an RSO, how would you keep the Ambassador's route unknown? RSO? What the hell is that? As an admin officer facing a budget . . . Admin officer? What's that? How would you solve the Middle East crisis? I mumbled and rambled. I was choking. My ground proximity warning system had begun screeching, "Terrain! Terrain!" I had no parachute! The flames licked at my oh-so-stylish Frye boots! Then the econ specialist asked me, "Describe a non-tariff trade barrier." Hark! A glimmer of hope? The night before I had read a long article in "Business Week" on how France kept US wines out of its market with labeling restrictions. I have a near photographic memory for those kinds of nerdy articles. I spit back the BW piece almost word for word. I started to regain control. The stick was responding! I began to see blue sky! The flames were subsiding! My questioner's jaw dropped: he was taking notes on my answer! Victory barrel roll over the airfield!

The Chairman asked me to wait in the hallway while the panel discussed my fate.

I sat in a folding chair in the hall near the door, a door which I had left slightly ajar--my first incursion into espionage! I could hear them discussing me. The Chairman, more on him later, announced, "I don't like him. He's not very good." A couple of the others mumbled some indistinct mutterings, and then my champion, the econ expert, intervened with a stirring endorsement, "Hell, it's late. He's no worse than anybody else. Might as well take him." I got called in. The Chairman sourly told me, "Well, you got in. The vote was 3-2. I voted against you. I don't think you're very good. We'll let you know when there is an opening." It took until August 1978 to get a job offer.

One penultimate note: that Chairman later got drummed out of the service for, essentially, cowardice and dereliction of duty when he abandoned his post in the middle of a major crisis. So the great wheel does turn and, some times, some times, it grinds the bones of your enemies into dust.

One really last note, the test now, I understand, is completely different as the old test was held to favor white males.

WLA