Monday, February 28, 2011

Any Day Now

If ACT holds true to form we February test takers should hear the news in a day or two. After receiving an initial email from ACT regarding the issue during my essay I haven't heard anything new from them. I am assuming they were waiting to see if they even needed to grade my essay or not. I don't think anyone really knows if one of the two essays was a practice prompt for future tests.

So we shall see, and hopefully the drama was much ado about nothing.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Groundhog Day

Well took the FSOT and after hearing all of the grousing from earlier test takers was pleasantly surprised. While I can't say that I understand the sorts of things they ask you it certainly wasn't any different than what I experienced last year. In fact, I thought it might have been a little bit easier.

I am 2/2 in terms of glitches when it comes to the FSO process. When I took the OA last year we had a problem during the CM. It was by no means a material sort of incident, but not something that you should have to put up with during the most grueling part of the OA.

I read the first essay prompt and was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty straight-forward and start banging on the the keys. I was really happy with my first two paragraphs and had about twenty minutes to go when, poof, it was all gone. I have the proctor take a look at things and she didn't have any idea what to do. By the time we figured out that I was hosed I only had about nineteen minutes left.

I did my best with in the remaining time, but I guess we'll see if it was good enough. Since we had to write two essays I can only hope that essay #2 was the one being tested.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

D minus 1

I wasn't sure what to even title this blog post as I head into the FSOT tomorrow. I went into the process last year knowing that I wanted to do something geo-political, but didn't have any really strong feelings about the State Department. Going into the test last year I honestly had no idea how I would do, but felt that the BIO and JK section would be my strengths and the EE and Essay would be the wildcards.

I wound up doing OK on the test. As you learn going through this, once you pass one hurdle it is more about what is up next. The value of your past performance sort of exponentially decays. Then at the OA nothing else matters except what you do from about 8:30AM - 3:00PM.

Since not making it through the OA (5.2), I have spent more time abroad and have had more exposure to State and USAID. I have realized that the realities of both of those organizations are much different than the perception of what you think you will actually be doing. Especially when it comes to USAID. Knowing what I know now, I am still taking the test tomorrow, but I am viewing the opportunity and the process much differently.

Good luck to everyone taking the test and just remember that this is an imperfect process, but the process is the same for everybody.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Round Two

It is time to get focused on the final prep for the FSO Written Test. I take it on the 10th so I still have a few days. I did well on all of the sections last time except the EE. I don't remember my exact scores, but they were something like 58/59 on both the JK and BIO, a whopping 48 on the EE and an eight on the essay. I have been spending most of my study time reading grammar books and writing essays. The idea of writing two essays isn't all that appealing, and it has been hard to get motivated for this to be honest.