Upswing

Consular officers are responsible for notifying the families of U.S. citizens who die overseas. In ConGen we briefly discussed the Kübler-Ross grief cycle because we're going to be dealing with some fairly grief-stricken people. You're probably familiar with the grief cycle (or something similar). It basically maps out standard human reaction to bad news. The simple form is:

Denial -> Anger -> Bargaining -> Depression -> Acceptance.

My reaction to this week's events have followed remarkably close to the cycle. Anger and depression were the most apparent stages, but there was definitely more than a hint of bargaining in my email to the CDOs. I won't claim to have reached full acceptance yet.

I did receive word yesterday from my CDO that they are putting together a new bid list of approved posts for us. This is both good and bad: good because we will some input in where we ultimately go, bad because it seems to take a long time to get posts approved. So we may not know where we're going for a quite a while.

In the meantime, I'll continue my Spanish studies. Please click here to see what class has been like this week.