Reply to Not sure I can handle another three years of husband's career

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[quote=Anonymous]FSO here.  Decent post is all relative.  As PPs have pointed out there are pluses and minuses to serving in any post, whether it is the developed or in the developing world and it is all generally in the eye of the beholder.  Some people, both spouses and FSOs, thrive on the opportunities offered at posts that are not in the developed world.  Others do not.  The latter, however, should then be questioning their commitment to a career in the Foreign Service.

One of the balancing acts my DW and I had to deal with are the prospects for spousal employment overseas.  In general, we have found the posts in the less developed countries to offer job opportunities for my DW to be better than what we would find in Western Europe.  My DW at almost every post has ended up working in well paid, professional jobs with USAID or with USAID contractors, and has been easily able to transfer that work back to Washington when we have come back for state-side assignments.  She is also very flexible.  You need that in order to do well in the FS life.

The other balancing act has been education, and that has generally been at the forefront of a lot of our assignment decisions.  We had one DD attend boarding school for the last three years of high school.  Our other DD attended school at our last African posting, which had an excellent school.  Both girls grew up with what I see are the advantages of so-called "third culture kids," which I think gave them a tremendous advantage not only in life experience and education, but in attractiveness to recruitment by U.S. colleges and universities.  Our oldest DD graduated college two years ago and is working for a large international company overseas as a junior manager.  Our other daughter will be completing her studies soon at an SLAC.  She has not yet decided on a career path, but I am sure she will do something extraordinary.  They have led extraordinary lives for their age, are extremely adaptable and truly broad-minded with true cross - cultural skills that will serve them well going forward in life.  My DW and I would not trade the experience that we have had in the FS.

That being said, as another PP pointed out, we FSOs are not indispensable and that FS will easily replace us tomorrow if we quit.  When I joined we had a counselor who did two things.  1) She told us to remember that the Department does not care about you.  You need to look out for yourself and your family interests; and 2) she had write on a piece of paper why we joined the FS and what we hoped to get out of it.  The point of this was to have something to remind us why we were doing what we were doing when we were bogged down in the s**t, so to speak.  I still have mine.  It is framed on the wall in my office.  I am here to "serve my country and see the world while doing so."

I have found that the FS perfectly fits my personality. I want to experience life.  The most important things to me are not how much stuff I accumulate, how big a house I have or the kind of car I drive.  I want to be able to look back on my life and say it was well-lived:  that I did something I felt was important and that I had fun doing it.

Good luck OP! 
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