By Lisa Kaczke
For students wanting to get paid to live overseas, joining the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) is one way to achieve that goal.
Michelle Lee, a former Northeastern lecturer in the communications department, spoke to a crowd of 30 students and faculty Monday about her experiences as an FSO and the process she went through to be employed by the State Department.
Lee spent the past year and a half working in the U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana, an American-friendly country in West Africa with a population of 21 million. At the beginning of her time as an FSO, she was an election observer during the latest election in Ghana. She watched as Ghanaians lined a dusty road to vote, some voting with their thumbprint because they were illiterate. There was an 82 percent voter turnout that day, she said.
“It’s been interesting to live in a country where people are proud to take part in the electoral process,” she said.
She is currently working in Ghana as a consular officer for a year, which is requried of all FSOs. She helps travelers who lose their passport and Ghanaians interested in immigrating to the United States.
One of her concerns when she was thinking of becoming an FSO was whether or not she could endorse policies that she didn’t agree with, since the main focus for diplomats is to support foreign policy and report information to Washington, D.C. But she realized that she could help make changes.
“It’s better to be in a position to influence policy than not,” she said.
One of the changes that she has implemented is a reform in law enforcement in central Ghana. She wrote a proposal to start a bicycle program that would provide bicycles to the Ghanaian police in the area, which was approved. To show their appreciation, they put on a show about catching an aggressor. She said Ghanaians are big on presentation.
Before going to Ghana, Lee had never been to Africa. At first, the images she saw, such as women carrying bowls on their heads, took some getting used to.
“Every day there’s some nugget of information you take in,” she said.
Lee also spoke of the process she went through to become an FSO.
According to the State Department’s Web site, “foreign service officers advocate American foreign policy, protect American citizens, and promote American business interests throughout the world.”
She began the process in September 2001 by taking a written exam she had to pass in order to go to the next step of an oral exam. The exam consisted of four sections. The first section, multiple choice questions, was on anything from politics to history to psychology. The second part was two essays, which are not graded unless the first part is above passing. There is also an English usage section and a biographical part.
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