As I advance in my Foreign Service career, there comes a time for reflection. It's been a long eight months, and I'm not sure I can keep up this pace. There are youngsters out there with more energy and more desire than I can muster anymore. The creeping onset of career senesence is upon me; time waits for no man; none of us is getting any younger.
So it was that I served as the administrator for the Foreign Service Written Examination here in Guatemala, where a crew of ex-pats (mostly Peace Corps) took the first step towards getting hired for my job. Not the best way to spend a Saturday, but it earned me a full day of comp time which I can use to turn some made-up-Guatemalan-holiday three-day weekend into a four-day weekend. Mostly it was a day of sitting and staring and occasionally checking the clock, as the proctor is not allowed to pass the time reading, which would just open the window for skulduggery among those hoping to usurp me. Weary is the head that wears the crown. Weary but watchful! The most unsettling part of the experience was when 15 of the 17 examinees had finished a given section of the test, and were not allowed to read, either, so we just sat there and stared at each other for ten minutes until the time expired on the two slowpokes. Perhaps we should have just gone ahead and had a staring contest -- winner gets to do 100 visa interviews on Monday.
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3 comments:
I bet after the first hour you were picturing all of them in their birthday suits, weren't you?
You mean: After the first second you were picturing all of them in their birthday suits...
I mean these were hot young Peace Corps volunteers, after all.
It was hard to tell which parts were hair and which parts were dirt.
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