Zero to 60

This was unexpected. But I could get used to it, and hope I do.

Even though I am specifically on the “do not call” list for the foreign service – the job in the pipeline – I got an job offer in April for July.

It came six days after I’d re-taken the oral assessment and somehow, with the “new” candidacy, it didn’t transfer over that I was supposed to be marked as unavailable.

My plan was to stay in Minot and finish the rebuild with Hope Village, and I was to be on DNC until November, which would have made me available for the January 2014 class, assuming there would be one.

So I declined that offer – you get one shot to say no, and then if you do it again, your candidacy is deep-sixed – and went on my merry way.

My plan was to finish up in Minot, get my offer, take a cool vacation (literally, as I was eying Antarctica) and then start real and gainful employment on January 27.

God mocked me.

The last foreign service orientation class – the six-week training for the position – is to be in September, and those invitations went out in July. Based on the numbers given earlier, there should have been about 14 or 15 in the class, but there were six. Even with my high score, I wasn’t high enough on the list to get one. But that was OK, because I was on DNC anyway.

Started hearing rumors of next year’s positions being cut back even more than this year’s, which would have been brutal since the 2013 numbers were half what the 2012 numbers were. I’ve even heard rumors of the January class being canceled and no hirings for the specific position I’ve been gunning for. (It’s an OMS, or office management specialist.)

I’m on a Yahoo! group for this job, and there are other people out there who are also close to being hired. One of them had a higher overall score than I did on the OA (she got bonus points; I didn’t) and she sits higher than me on the register but is also unavailable until January.

One Tuesday, she posted on the board that she’d received a call on a job offer because they added two spots to the September class. The person who called told her they knew she was on DNC but was just checking to verify that she was not interested. She assured them she was not.

And then I got an emailed offer. No “hey, you’re on do-not-call, just checking” but the offer. Same as July – the one if I said no to a second time, they’d drop me.

My supervisor was in his office when I opened the email and I said something to the effect of “You’ve GOT to be kidding me” or “Again?” or something similar that made him ask me what was up.

I read it to him and he, the ever calm peacemaker, said to step back and think about it a minute. This is the second time it’s come, so maybe this really was God telling me to go ahead and leave Minot.

I truly hate to do it, but the way it’s worked is since the end of June, the one partner has thwarted the recovery efforts.

No, that’s not true. Since I’ve been in Minot, they’ve done it. Left and right, everything I suggest to try to get volunteers, they shoot down. It goes on and on, really, and it makes me so sick I want to vomit.

But in June, which was the second anniversary of the flood, it became evident to me that we are not going to finish by Oct. 31, which was the goal and the reason to extend.

Then, we had 100+ volunteers for the only time this summer, and they had them doing yard work. That’s a nice concept, but it’s directly in opposition to our mission, which is to rebuild the homes.

We’ve (meaning this partner has) turned away volunteers – over 150 – and misused the ones we’ve had. It’s made me sick to my stomach on more times than I care to count, because all I want to do is get the homeowners back.

I’ve done everything in my power to bring attention to Hope Village, and have done well. I’ve built the brand but this partner had just undermined so many things.

Example: they sent out a letter to the homeowners saying Hope Village was closing in October, but they would finish the rebuild. That’s NOT true. At the board meeting, which is where they were asked to send a letter, we explicitly said we would not use the word “close.”

But they sent out the letter anyway, denied they were doing it and didn’t bother to check with the board on the wording, or even cc: in the alleged PR person (me).

So too much of that was getting to me, and I decided I had to accept the offer.

It set off a whirlwind that won’t end until I board a plane for DC. And then another whirlwind will begin.

Mostly, it’s been gut-wrenching. I didn’t want to leave and now I feel like I am abandoning Minot.

The one extremely palatable thing has been discovering I am going to become a gainfully employed federal employee with all the benefits that come with that.

My salary offer almost caused me to faint. I’m coming in at the lower grade, I think an FP-4, because everyone comes in at that one. But it has 14 steps in the grade with about a $20k range in between. And they’re bringing me in at step 14.

So I’m going to shift gears fast and go from practically zero as an AmeriCorps volunteer to close to $60k as a federal employee. Yay!

For foreign service, you also get housing paid (assuming you’re overseas), plus different allowances if applicable, like cost of living, danger or hardship pay.

In Jakarta, for example, there are COLA and hardship allowances that account for another 30 percent. Not all posts have allowances, though.

After two years, I get a month of “home leave” which must be spent in the US.

The job is an OMS, so it’s in my wheelhouse even if it isn’t what I totally love. I’ve read reports of people in the field and it sounds pretty cool, though, so I am looking forward to it.

And no, I don’t know where I will go.

The drill is I will be in DC for six weeks of orientation. During the first week, we will get a list of the available posts and “bid” on them. There are eight in my position so there should be eight posts and I think I rank them high, medium or low.

Three weeks later, we all find out where we’re going. The posts are two years for the first two and then after tenure they’re between one and three, but I think it’s usually two.

It is possible that I will be in DC for longer than six weeks, because some posts require language or other training.

So now the frantic work begins. I have to unpack everything that’s been in storage since 2007 and organize it. It consists of multiple piles, such as “store until retirement,” “might use at post later,” “need for posts now,” “may or may not use in DC” and the like.

I’m up to my ears in paperwork, which isn’t surprising because it’s a federal gig.

I really have mixed feelings about it, though. I really wanted to stay in Minot.