Week 6:
A Day in the Life

July 16, 2016

Having reached the midway point of my internship, I believe it’s time that I give a rundown of my daily activities. This week, one of my projects was the coordination of the intern program’s “Day in the Life” series that each intern is required to do, where we plan a day to show what our section does, what our officers think, and how that applies to our future career paths. I was the first intern to host this event for their section, and I have to say, I’m pretty proud of how it turned out. The schedule of events went like this:

10:30 – meet with Diego, non-immigrant visas chief in Consular conference room

10:45 – walk through of the visa applicant line

11:15 – watch non-immigrant visa interviews and American citizen services interviews

12:00 – brown bag lunch in PAS conference room with American Citizen Services Chief Holly Wilkerson, Visa Chief Chris Kjelland, and other consular officers

Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures of the event, as it’s in the Embassy compound, but the event almost went exactly according to plans. The times shifted a little bit as the day went on, but we started and ended on time, which is what matters at the end of the day. The other interns were impressed by the amount of work that went into applying for a Visa, especially the interview portion, and we heard some great war stories from Holly and Chris about their experiences at their past and current postings. I was slightly worried that their stories would scare off the other interns from a FSO career in NIV or ACS, but it ended up being the opposite! They loved the blood and guts, so maybe a new career path is now an option for them.

In the same line of thinking, I feel as if I should give a complete synopsis of my daily schedule. Every weekday morning, I wake up at 6:30, actually make it out of bed by 6:45, and am leaving my apartment for Estacion Jose Hernandez to take the Subte around 7:35. Around 7:50 I’m at the Embassy, changing my shoes and grabbing breakfast from the Commissary, so by 8:00 I’m (hopefully) at my desk, tea and medialuna in hand, ready to start work. I go through my email, read any updates for the day that my boss may have sent outlining new tasks, and start work on my long term projects. This can range from anything from my logo project to drafting new forms for the department to cleaning out the inbox of files. I work on these until whatever tasks for the day come up, which they always do. These can then range from cleaning up the waiting room to helping with voter registration cards to working on the website, but also much bigger things, like going out on ACS cases. Usually I’ll eat lunch around 12:30 with the other interns, eating in the Commissary to get a break from my desk even though I bring my own lunch. I then return to work and continue working on my projects until around 5:00, when I head home.

Once I’m home, my week nights are moderately boring. As the amount of remaining days are dwindling with my time here, I am making an effort to see and do more, but I usually come home, go for a walk/run of some sort, cook myself dinner while watching Netflix (I’ve recently been binging Friends–my nostalgia for the USA) and then settling in for the night. This week however has been really busy, which has been greatly appreciated. On Wednesday, the Embassy interns and the Ambassador were invited to the house of Marcos Bulgheroni, a high level businessman in the Argentine energy industry, for dinner.

Now for something completely different, I wanted to talk a little bit about mental health. This past week has been one of the hardest for me so far, not because of any one thing, but lots of small things that have built up. It’s strange to think about, but these things really do sneak up on you. Now that I’m aware of it though, I can handle it a lot better than I before.

I’m currently struggling with how hard this work can be, in terms of emotional attachment. The kind of work that Consular does, specifically ACS, is extremely taxing, and wears you down. While abroad, ACS takes care of you from the moment you’re born until after you’re dead. We’re in charge of contacting family after someone dies, checking on them in the hospital, making decisions in cases of emergency, and helping the family navigate the complicated process of having a body shipped back to the states vs being cremated, of how to handle the foreign country’s government, etc. The amount of death cases that we’ve had these past few weeks has been shocking, and it’s wearing me down. There are cases of kids my age dying while abroad, and if hearing about those cases didn’t freak me out, I don’t know what would. Life is short, and you never know what’s going to happen, so be safe out there friends, and make sure you don’t have any regrets. Especially if you’re in Buenos Aires – I don’t want to have another AmCit case.