Now What?

Woohoo! Misha is joining the Foreign Service and I’m going with her!

Deep breaths. Okay… now what? Once the excitement calmed down and we came to terms with reality, we realized we had a lot of work to do. I worked as a Beer Buyer and Marketing Manager for a craft beer and wine shop in Needham, MA, so we were in the midst of the busiest season of the year. UTEC, like most NGO’s, was perennially over-worked and under-staffed. Misha was the Direct of Evaluation and Impact, so she had a ton of responsibility, and often had to take on tasks that fell far outside of her job description… and far outside normal working hours. So, on top of already being overloaded at our jobs, we were facing a major transition.

While our professional lives were running at full speed, we now had to figure out how to get Misha down to DC on time, how and when to inform our current jobs we were leaving, what to do with our dog, how and when we were going to break our lease, what to do about all of our belongings, and a million other things!

In the following weeks, things only got more complicated. Although Misha had figured out her exit strategy at work, she was now even more overloaded than before. On top of this, rumors about a potential government shutdown started to swirl. Then those rumors turned into reality, and on December 22nd, the government shutdown officially began.

What did this mean for Misha’s job? Did she still have one? Did that delay her start date if she did? Not only were many government workers supposed to be on vacation for the holidays, many more were about to be furloughed. Misha, and presumably many more of the new hires, were trying unsuccessfully to reach out to their HR reps to get some sort of clarity on the whole situation. Now, HR departments are notorious for giving you the run around, but getting an answer from someone in this case was worse than pulling teeth.

After a few highly stressful weeks, and with the help of a Facebook group dedicated to Misha’s A-100 class (the name of the job orientation training program), we were able to find out that the start date was not pushed back, and they did in fact still have jobs. One thing that helped was that the government provides an apartment for you. It took a while before we figured out exactly where we’d be living and if Misha would be able to move in when she got down to DC, but it all worked out in the end. Although her official start date was January 7th, it would be another two weeks before Misha was able to go to work and fully join the ranks for our under-appreciated diplomatic corps.