Who I am—or was, nearly 20 years ago

Back in 1988, I was jumping through various hoops and over the obstacles that they put in front of you if you want to join the Foreign Service, something I kind of thought of as "the family business," since my dad had been a Foreign Service officer when I was a kid. One of the requirements was to submit a "narrative autobiography." Here's mine:

I suppose every little boy imagines his own adulthood by observing his father and deciding to be just like dad. My earliest memories are of living in Northern Ireland, where my father was a vice-consul in Belfast. If Dad had been a lawyer or a businessman, I would have wanted to be a lawyer or businessman, but because he was in the Foreign Service, that was my first goal too.

But, like every other kid in the world, I changed my mind as I got older. Over the course of the years I wanted to be a cowboy, a lawyer, a comic book artist, a teacher, a commercial artist, a writer, and finally... a Foreign Service officer.

I was born May 11, 1955 in the Colony of Gibraltar, my dad's second post. The backdrops to my first four years of life changed with my dad's assignments: back to the States, Washington, DC and Northern Ireland. When he resigned in 1959, we returned to the United States on an ocean liner, crossed the country in a Volkswagen bus, and settled down in Minnesota. That's not a huge amount of travel, but it was enough to convince me of two things that stayed with me: the world is a bigger place than just my hometown, and the world is a smaller place when you've had a chance to be out in it.

We ended up in Stillwater, Minnesota, the kind of place where people tend to underestimate Norman Rockwell, because it looks like all he ever did was paint scenes of our town. The image of the United States that I'd brought home was primarily a result of the only American TV show the Irish station carried: "The Lone Ranger." I knew I was an American, so I supposed I wanted to grow up to be a cowboy—a good one that fought for justice, of course.

I went to public school and did pretty well. I discovered a couple American institutions: baseball, a game of rules and strategy, and Perry Mason, who used rules and strategy to discover the truth in a TV courtroom every week. Since I was a good student and only an average athlete, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. My mother was thrilled.

In junior high I was in the band, on the baseball team, and editor of the school paper. I was a Boy Scout for a while, won an American Legion award, and got a paper route. The paper route allowed me to indulge in the major vice of my life: collecting comic books. So in ninth grade, when assigned a social studies report on what career each of us wanted to pursue, I wrote about becoming a comic book artist. It sounded like the kind of job that would allow me to be creative and work in a field that fascinated me.

When I got into high school, I discovered girls and rock 'n' roll, got rebellious, and let my hair grow long so I could be different—just like everyone else. Mom and Dad hated it. The only adults with whom I had regular contact that didn't seem to be bothered by the length of my hair, were my teachers. I figured there must be something about teaching that keeps a person's brain receptive to new ideas, and decided that education was the career for me.

In spite of my show of rebelliousness, I graduated from high school with honors, and after a year off, enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, River Falls.

I probably shouldn't have taken the year off, or I probably should have taken more years off right away. In any case, by the time I'd stumbled through about two and a half years of college, I'd managed to achieve a miserably low GPA, amass about a year's worth of credits, and rack up a formidable list of incompletes. I left before they could ask me to.

It was winter 1976, I was twenty-one years old, and I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do.

I have to assume that there was some kind of auto-pilot buried in my subconscious that helped me make some of the decisions I made after dropping out. I was not qualified to do much, but I'd recently held a job in the college bookstore at River Falls. It was blind luck that on the morning I woke up and decided to look for some kind of job, there were two bookstores advertising in the "help wanted" section of the paper. One was a nearby B. Dalton; the other the bookstore at Lakewood Community College. The B. Dalton job was permanent, full-time. The Lakewood Bookstore job was two weeks, temporary, with the possibility of regular employment developing by fall. In spite of my disaffection with college, I pursued and got the Lakewood job. I never followed up on the other one.

When the initial two weeks were up, the manager offered me a full- time position beginning in August. I accepted without hesitation. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was forcing myself to reexamine my feelings about college by once again making a commitment to one. It worked. The daily exposure to books, teachers, and people who were excited by learning and committed to the educating process eventually seduced me.

It took six and a half years, but in fall of 1982 I went down to River Falls during the first week of school, convinced the registrar that this time I'd be a good risk, and re-enrolled.

There was only one regret in going back to school. During my hiatus I'd begun doing freelance commercial art, first for a local nightclub, and eventually a wide variety of clients in the Twin Cities' entertainment industry. By 1981, I'd set up a studio in St. Paul with a friend of mine, and had expanded to include more mainstream advertising and T-shirt design. Had I not gone back to school, I was determined to carve out a career as a commercial artist, as the head of my own agency. But school was something I'd left undone, the studio was small, and I wanted that education. Drawing is something you do with your hands, and my brain wanted something to do.

It took four years to get the mess I'd left behind straightened out. I attended school part-time, worked at Lakewood part-time, and slept part-time.

I'm proud of the job I did at River Falls. As an English major/ professional writing minor, I dragged my GPA to within a fraction of 3.5 (of a possible 4), won two departmental scholarship awards, was a runner-up for a third, won a national writing contest sponsored by the National Association of College Stores, was vice-president of the local chapter of Kappa Sigma (the English honor society), and was awarded a gold R (a merit award) upon graduation in 1986.

As I worked through those four years, I discovered I had a facility for writing, and considered a career as a professional writer. However, writing always seemed to be more a tool to use in the practice of other jobs, rather than a job unto itself. I reviewed my interests and options and tried to decide what career I should aim for after graduation.

I'd been taking a lot of geography, history, and political science classes as electives, primarily because that kind of thing interests me. I love to read the paper, the editorials, the news magazines, the debates in the media over policies and ideas. I'm fascinated when National Public Radio or the Canadian Broadcasting Company focus on a particular region or country for an extended report. I like to know what's going on out there in the world.

And sometimes what's going on makes me mad. Sometimes I say to myself, "What can the people who made that decision be thinking? That's certainly not what I'd do!"

Sometime in 1985, I realized what I wanted to do. I signed up to take the Foreign Service exam. My reasons go all the way back to when I was a kid, and they still are the things that motivate me today. They might look a little silly and idealistic on paper, but I guess sometimes our aspirations do.

I realized that I want a job where a person can work for his or her ideals, like the Lone Ranger fought for justice and Perry Mason used his strategies and the rules to discover truth. I want a job like my teachers had, where I'll have to keep my mind open and not be misled by superficial appearances, a job where learning about new things and meeting new people are important elements. I want a job like an artist or a writer, where what you have to offer depends as much on what's inside of you as what you can do, a job working with the things that fascinate you.

Let's have a reality break for a second. I understand that we're talking about a bureaucracy here. But remember, I've worked in one for over eleven years now. My job at Lakewood is a civil service position. I understand that one person doesn't march in and turn things inside out or upside down to satisfy some personal whim to tilt at windmills. Thank heavens.

The size and inertia innate in a bureaucracy can function as both its strength and its weakness. If change could be caused too easily or occur too readily, the system would be in a constant state of flux, or worse, collapse into chaos. If a change is desirable, it will occur as a result of a consensus. It will occur slowly, and by increments, allowing the entire system to adjust to the change. Ideally, of course. This is supposed to be a reality break.

I've got this Frank Capra-esque notion that if you want to change things, you do it by getting into the system and trying to make it work the way it's supposed to, not by standing around on the outside complaining.

So when I add all of it up, I end up back where I started. I want to be a Foreign Service officer. I knew it thirty years ago when I was a little kid in Ireland, I just didn't have a good set of reasons. I think I do now.

The one thing I didn't mention in the above, that also played a significant role in my career choice at the time is that during my next-to-last year at River Falls, I'd pretty much settled on taking the LSAT and then going on to law school. However, when the time to register for the test rolled around, I noticed that it was the same Saturday in December when they were offering the Foreign Service Exam. More important, it cost $50 to take the LSAT and the Foreign Service Exam was free. I was a college student and money was always tight. So that Saturday in December, I kept my $50 and the world gained a diplomat—for a while at least—and was spared another attorney.