DC Here We Come
It’s official, I will be in the July 2022 training program!
After about 2.5 months on the register, I received an email today with my official offer for the July 5th training program. It was such a surreal moment as this process has been 17 months in the making, and It suddenly feels very real that this will indeed be happening. I feel equal parts ecstatic, nervous and terrified. I would be lying if I didn’t admit there was a small part of me that had a mini mom panic moment at the realization that I will be uprooting my family and heading out into the unknown with a toddler. The feeling was of course quickly assuaged by the fact that I landed my dream job and will be able to offer my family the experience of a lifetime.
I’m a first generation college student that got my start at community college so the imposter syndrome is real. If anybody is doubting their ability to achieve what feels like the impossible let me tell you, YOU GOT THIS! My academic journey was not linear. I bounced between Journalism and English majors before deciding on nursing and then to NP and finally now to U.S. Diplomat.
!Si se puede mi gente!
I received the invite, so now what ?!
The welcome email has a link to a portal where you can accept or decline the invitation. Upon accepting you fill out more personal background and education info, upload a resume and transcripts etc. This information is used to determine your salary. Entry salaries for the department of state can be found here. It looks like the registrar will review this info and then notify me with my final salary offer letter.
Next up is housing. I will likely take advantage of the state’s Permanent Change of Station (PCS) Lodging Program. They provide temporary furnished housing to state employees while living in DC for training. I have never lived in DC or Arlington before so this will be a completely new experience for this California girl! There are a lot of great options on the PCS lodging list, we gave them our top 3 apartment choices, but we won’t get final confirmation of the exact apartment building until 2 weeks before. Along with covering our lodging, there is also a Per diem rate that I will receive while in DC that covers meals and incidentals (M&IE)- such as meals, laundry, subway fares etc. As of now it looks like M&IE will come out to about $79 a day (FYI the rate slightly decreases after 60 and 120 days)- which will be a welcome added bonus!
My family will be coming with me to training, so it is imperative that we find a preschool/daycare. DOS has several options. Diplotots (I mean come on that name- ridiculously adorable) has two locations and seems to be the cheapest at $1665 a month for full time toddler care. The locations however were not ideal for us based on where we likely will be living (and we won’t have a car the entire time) so we’re interviewing with a few other options that DOS recommended. Both are a bit more expensive around $2,000 a month for full time toddler care but the ease of drop off and pick up would be well worth the extra money.
After getting in touch with housing and childcare, I contacted transportation and set up a tentative pack out date for the end of June. We won’t be able to actually move until we have our official travel orders, but it’s recommended to at least reserve the date as soon as you can. So as you can see things have really been moving along, a mere 6 days after accepting the invite I already have my moving day scheduled! I have to say the transition so far has been pretty smooth. I received immediate responses in regards to my request for housing, childcare and pack out dates so I’m feeling optimistic and not too daunted by this process.
There is a massive amount of information that I will have to parse through over the coming weeks and months (no joke the moving and packing manual is 100 pages). We will do some serious spring cleaning to get rid of stuff we just don’t need, then I’ll start to organize our UAB (unaccompanied baggage) which will be shipped to DC. This includes some kitchen stuff, clothes, baby gear like highchair, car seat etc. For UAB we are a family of 3 and allowed 600 pounds of gear. In total we are allowed 18,000 pounds of storage at some mysterious site in Maryland that we can pull from when we go to post. Still not quite sure what we will send to storage, as we are planning on getting rid of most of our furniture.
Here we are, after all this waiting and radio silence from the state, and it suddenly feels like they are bombarding us with info. I suppose it is always better to be over prepared and informed!
So yes DC here we come. I’m ecstatic for a warm and humid summer (I will actually get to wear shorts, gasp!). SF summers are notoriously cold and foggy so it will be a welcome change. I bid adieu to my dear friend Karl the fog (yes, us San Franciscans have named our thick ubiquitous layer of fog) and say oh heyyyy sweaty DC summer.
