I had an early brush with International Relations except that at that time, I didn’t know exactly what it was.
Blame it on my father who is an avid reader and subscriber of Time Magazine. It was inevitable that every time we would go on long drives, he would talk to me about Bill Clinton and US foreign policy, about Kosovo, the inevitable split of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and about the latest rundown of Time’s People of the Century.
These conversations happened as early as I was transitioning from pre-school to grade school, so when I would bring up the topic to my friends while we were playing Barbie dolls, I would get a bit hurt that to them, I was talking gibberish. After all, I thought, didn’t their dads talk about these stories to them, too?
Hence, it was no surprise that when I applied to be a part of our elementary school publication (The Stones and Pebbles), I naturally chose to answer the question about Slobodan Milosevic, rather than that of Kris Aquino.
Looking back, I’d have to say it was a good choice because roughly 15 years since that day, I had to talk about Milosevic and the Yugoslavia Tribunal again during the written exam of the Foreign Service Officers Exam (FSOE).
It’s funny how in grade school, my mother wanted me to be a certified public accountant-slash-lawyer. I went along with her, of course, but deep inside, I really wanted to be one of those people who wore business suits with various flags behind their backs, and who met and talked with world leaders.
It’s just that although I read about them in Time, and heard and saw them being interviewed in CNN, I didn’t know who or what these people exactly were.
Fast forward a few years later, and I realized that some of these people were career diplomats.
I wanted to be a career diplomat. I just didn’t know how to get there. Yet.
It wasn’t until I was in my junior year in college when people started to broach the idea about becoming a Foreign Service Officer. Their encouragement to take the exam came with the warning that the FSOE was going to be the most dreaded battery of tests I will be taking in my life.
One of the people I knew said that it was five times more difficult than the Bar exams. That detail I will never be able to confirm since I have never come close to taking the Bar.
True enough, the average passing rate of the FSOE is somewhere between one to five percent of the total number of examinees. The casualty rate usually increases at the level of the written exam and the oral exams.
With no formal training in International Relations, I decided, upon graduating from the Silliman University College of Mass Communication, that I was better off joining a multinational company where my stakes of making it in, I felt, were higher than going through the tightrope that was the FSOE.
If life after graduation were an ice cream flavor, I would have to say that it was Rocky Road–with extra nuts.
After I was awarded as one of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines in Malacanang Palace, my prospects of landing in a decent job were close to nil, and I was getting desperate.
I was running after work, and begging for companies to take me in. Eventually, only one multinational company opened its door to me, and although the work was less than desirable, I decided to hang on to it for the sake of two things: the fat pay check, and the fact that I would no longer be the only one in my college batch who was jobless.
I guess my journey truly began somewhere in 2012 after I was wallowing in my own tears, overcome with grief and frustration over my professional life.
Since 2009, I felt like a failure, as far as career went, so in between sobbing and writing my resignation letter, I mustered the courage to call up Ambassador Tony Villamor to tell him that finally, after three years of putting off the FSOE, I was ready to take the exam, and give it my best shot.
Preparing for the FSOE wasn’t easy, but it was therapeutic because it gave me something to hope for. That was all I needed — after having to deal with almost four years of suffering in the workplace, and trying to please those who valued mediocrity over excellence.
My first step was to carefully plot out the stages of the FSOE so I could make a timetable for my review. The tricky part was that I had to intensely review, while making sure that I did not sacrifice my output in my hectic fulltime job, as well as with the master’s program I was enrolled in at the University of San Carlos.
My second concern was that I had absolutely no formal training in International Relations which meant that I had to seriously go back to scratch.
Since I was scrimping already, I didn’t have enough money to send myself to the FSOE review classes at the Ateneo. But because I felt I wanted to make it so badly, I knew there was just no excuse for not being able to prepare.
While driving home one time, I realized that my goal should not just be to pass the exam, but to make it at the top of my batch. It’s a big dream but I was sure that if I really worked hard for it, I might have at least a good shot at it. And if I didn’t make it to the top? Well, at least I’d still pass and become a career diplomat.
Since I had to work for eight to 10 hours every day, I made a promise to myself to set aside three to four hours each day to study, review, and test myself.
The first part of the FSOE was the qualifying exam, a standardized test patterned after the professional civil service exam–only harder. It covered topics like English, Logical Reasoning, and Mathematics/Statistics.
This naturally gave me jitters because I had always performed so badly in standardized exams.
To review for the qualifying exam, I photocopied and answered all types of professional civil service exam reviewers and GRE, LSAT, and GMAT reviewers. I would answer as many of the reviewers as I could in a time-pressured environment, check my scores, and record it in a little log book that I created in Microsoft Excel to track my performance. The goal was to consistently hit at least 99 percent in each of the subjects being covered before I can truly say that I was ready.
A couple of months into the qualifying exam review was when I started reviewing for the written exam, even though there was no assurance yet that I would make it to that part.
The next part of the FSOE was the preliminary interview. Preparing for this was a little bit like preparing for the written test. Although people were telling me that this was a lighter version of the interview versus the oral exam, I figured that I still had to give myself a hard time with this.
So apart from my readings, I would prepare rolls of paper with questions written on them, and I would answer them one by one until review time was over.
The last time I was in an interview was three years ago at that time, and I guess I just needed to scrape off some layers of rust here and there to be ready.
I have never reviewed more intensely for any other exam than I did for the written exam. It was the level of the FSOE that witnessed the most mortalities in the past years.
In the written exam phase, I needed to answer 10 to 20 essay questions for each of the six subjects in a span of three hours per subject. The subjects covered were International Relations, Philippine History, Philippine Foreign Policy, International Law, Economics, World History, and Current Events.
The icing on top of the cake was the foreign language test where everything — from the instructions to the grammar and essay questions — were written in your foreign language of choice.
Considering that I only had six units of Spanish in college, I knew I had to brush up on this big time.
For the written exam, the three to four-hour rule to study and test myself still stood, except with the addition of the weekends.
I didn’t know exactly what to read up on, so I simply gathered introductory books on the topic so I could really start from the beginning. I also revisited the books we had read back in college that covered topics like economics and world history. I decided to stop listening to music in my car, and instead I listened to audio books on anything that had something to do with the topics being covered.
I read the Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Economist, The Manila Bulletin, CNN.com, and a wad of new clippings while I was waiting for a client meeting, and as a fitting way to start my day.
To hit two birds with one stone, I listened to regular daily podcasts of news delivered in Spanish. This took an hour of time every day while driving.
This was followed by a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that I had downloaded the night before, as a substitute to actually having a lecturer discuss in front of me.
It was also a huge advantage to have a boyfriend who is equally knowledgeable in Economics, Current Events, and International Affairs such that almost half of the time on our Skypdates were spent talking about these topics, asking me what I thought about anything from the Eurozone Crisis to the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement.
To cap my review for the written test, I set three weekends to simulate the exam by answering a few essay questions covering the topics.
I realized later on there was really just no way to completely review for this part of the test, especially when you get questions like: “Culture is not usually considered in the computation of GNP and GDP. Propose a comprehensive mechanism to fully account this aspect when we compute GNP and GDP”. Or “Justify why Jose Rizal’s Noli Mi Tangere and El Filibusterismo deserve to be a part of the Penguin Classics series.” And mind you, those were the easiest questions in the exam.
Of course, there was nothing much I could do to prepare for the psychological exam, except that my subject in psychometrics back in USC came as a welcome advantage.
Finally when I was notified about the oral exams four months after the psychological exams, I knew that I was up for even more rough seas. The oral exams was split into three stages: the One-on-One Interview (my favorite) , The Debate (my favorite), and the Public Speaking Round (also my favorite).
We were grilled by a panel of professors, experts, heads of mission, ambassadors, and other esteemed persons during this round about anything and everything, from art to foreign policy, and it was intensive as it was nerve-wracking to merely sit in front of people you’ve only read about in the news.
The second part of the exam was the debate where we were divided into three groups of two sides in what was a modified British Parliamentary type of debate. I was given the government side in the morning, which meant that I had to take the opposition side in the afternoon. I was the whip during both rounds.
The last and final part was the public speaking round which was what many examinees dreaded the most because apart from our actual speech, we would be judged based on our social graces–that is, fine dining etiquette.
There was no way for us to tell when it was our turn to speak during the public speaking round, except when someone tapped your shoulder and told you you’re up next.
We had to draw a rolled piece of paper from a fish bowl which contained the topic we would be talking about. We were given one minute to prepare for a three-minute speech. Imagine standing on a platform in a place like the Waterfront Hotel Cebu Pacific Ballroom, with the spotlight on you, and tables filled with batchmates and diplomats looking at you. That’s what the public speaking round was like.
I was third to the last to speak that night, and my topic was: “You are the Philippine Representative to the United Nations, and you are asked to join Session 2 on Territorial Disputes. Discuss the Philippine stake on the territorial dispute between China and Japan for the Senkakus/Diaoyus.”
Safe to say that while I was reading the chosen topic, my mind completely went blank. It was only until I was up on stage that I was left with no choice but to talk about what came to mind first.
I guess it was really my years of training at Silliman University on the art of public speaking and debate that truly prepared me for the inevitable step in the FSOE. Speaking used to be one of my greatest weaknesses, but Silliman gave me great coaches who became life-long friends, who not only improved my proficiency and ease in the English language, but more importantly, trained me to think on my feet.
I was with the SU Debate Society for roughly seven years, since I was 13 years old. I guess you can never unlearn public speaking as a skill because while I was preparing for this round by debating with myself at home, it was as if I had never stopped practicing in the first place.
Training in public speaking and debate is something I will always value, and which I hope more Silimanians will also come to value. After all, being exceptional in speaking — and speaking with sense, at that–is a trademark Sillimanians have always had.
The weeks that followed the oral exams were days of agonizing waiting for the results to come out. These were weeks filled with wondering if I would make it or not.
When the results finally came in while I was on the way to meet my boyfriend after work, I felt a sense of numbness wash over me, before the results finally sank in. It was then that I realized that while the FSOE was finally and officially over, the real test of becoming a Career Diplomat, whom the country could be truly proud of, had just begun.
Looking back, I guess everything unfolds in God’s perfect timing. Although sales was never my cup of tea, it was essential in helping me understand the art of negotiation, and how both micro and macroeconomics panned out and overlapped. God closed all the doors, only to unlock that one door that was specifically meant for me all along.
It will be another rough ride replete with challenges from now on, but I tell you, I feel that this will be one joyride that began with roads that took me back to a childhood dream I thought would remain just that–a childhood dream.
