Auswärtiges Amt - Ministry of External Affairs

I’ve talked about my love for and relationship with English in the last post of this series. The post focused on my time at school and the bilingual Abitur. But you’re never done learning, are you? So, as one of the biggest injustices in a young person’s life, once you have finally managed to get yourself to the final exams of high school, you’re supposed to choose what you’re going to learn next. For the past twelve or thirteen years your only goal was to make it to and pass your Abitur exams and then, before you’ve even taken them, they ask you to think about what other exams you’d like to take in the future. For over a decade my only goal was the Abitur and now, suddenly there’s a life afterwards? One that I have to make decisions about?

Yes, yes indeed. But schools do try to equip their students with the right tools to make such important decisions. So, I was sent on internships and work experiences. However, it was my personal experience that those were especially good at teaching me what I did not like, as opposed to what I could see myself doing as a job for the rest of my life.

And while knowing what you don’t like is worth something (yes, all the teachers, grandparents and parents, I know), it doesn’t help immensely when looking for an occupation or a path to take. All of my friends suggested I should study English and French and then become a teacher, as I 1) loved languages and was good at them and 2) already tutored some of my classmates. But I did not want to do that.

One major reason for my aversion to teaching or becoming a teacher was that I did not (and do not) have an endless well of patience and that I neither then nor ever exuded authority. Whether a class full of 13-year-olds and/or myself would have made it through a 45-minute lesson would thus have been a good question. But I was even less excited about those students‘ parents. While my parents subscribed to the idea that my marks (good or bad) were generally due to my behaviour or effort, there were (and are) a fair few parents who assume that bad or less desirable grades are due to a teacher not doing their job, rather than a teenager not putting in the work. “What are you doing to entice my child to do their homework?” instead of „Why are you not doing your homework?”As I was part of the student council I spent many a parent-teacher conference behind a coffekart, picking up parts of conversations. I learned that parents who don’t have a problem with their childrens’ teachers don’t frequent these conferences very much.

I could see myself exploding at the first-ever conversation during my first-ever parent-teacher conference. No, this was probably not for me.

But there also was another big reason why I wasn’t thrilled with the idea to study French and English and that is that – at least in Germany – studying a language at university doesn’t mean becoming really good at speaking, understanding and writing it. It means understanding the language's origin and history, the way words were formed and developed, how o’s became u’s over time and all those sorts of things. All of these aspects truly are interesting to me today and I’d like to listen to a presentation about (some of) them, but I wouldn’t want to write exams about such subjects. And I didn’t back then either. Especially, if you imagine that afterwards you’re teaching six-graders past tense. They wouldn’t care when the word “go” was first used and whether its root lies in Scandinavian or Indo-Germanic languages, they would be mad because they can say “I walked” but not “I goed”. Even if the difference in how the past participle is derived is found in the linguistic history of these words, a 12-year-old could not care less. So, it would be loads of info learned and never used.Furthermore, I was afraid that a deep dive into a language might have the same effect on my relationship with it, that analyses of pretty poems had on my relationship with them. From year 10 onward I hardly did anything but analysing texts for exams. For history it was a historic text that we needed to put into the context of its time and then comment on it from a historic and current point of view; for biology we received scientific articles that we had to judge or further explain the processes and phenomena mentioned; for German, English, French and Spanish we were expected to analyse fictional and factual texts in terms of stylistic devices and their meanings.

Every now and again we’d get a speech – I was in high school during Obama’s first term as President of the United States, so we read through quite a few of his speeches – but we mostly dealt with fiction and poetry.

Common questions were what the subject of a poem was, what the author wanted to tell us, how they did that which images or stylistic devices they used to do so, or whether we could trust the lyrical I (the narrator of the story or poem) and how all of that fit together with the central subject of the text. At the end of a lesson or exam the sheet with the poem on it was utterly colourful: blue highlighter for the stylistic devices, yellow for themes, pink for anything that isn’t immediately clear, blue pen for information or notes concerning the highlighted text and black pen for questions and other notes.Even if you loved the poem when you first read it, you knew it wouldn’t stay like that. Because that first read was by far not the last one.But you do start with it, the firs reading is to just read the poem. The second is to write the mandatory summary, the third one to make sure you didn’t miss anything. The fourth one is to judge the narrator or lyrical I, can we trust them? Do I have to further explain them? The fifth reading is to analyse the rhyme scheme (if one exists). During the sixth one you highlight and label all the stylistic devices that jump out at you, during the seventh reading you look for less obvious ones. The eighth reading focuses on themes and repetitions and their meaning in the context of the entire work. During the ninth one the black-pen-notes are taken into consideration. What else was I going to look at and why? During the the tenth reading you check all your observations and conclusions. Were you right? And the eleventh read-through is to make sure you really didn’t miss anything.

During read-through eight at the latest, the all poems lost their magic. No longer were they poetic declarations of love (all-girls school, loads of love poems), but they’d become a pile of rhymes, metaphors, similes, repetitions, climaxes, alliterations, hyperboles, euphemisms, anaphors, oxymorons, ellipses, personifications and rhetorical questions. Where’s the magic in that? Instead of warm, fuzzy feelings the poem now invoked frustration (especially, if you thought you’d forgotten something, but didn’t know what).

I feared that the same would happen to a language once I started studying it thoroughly. That its beauty would vanish, just like that of every last poem I analysed to death. I could not take that risk.

So, what does the passionate language-fan do then?

This one went to an apprenticeship and university fair in her home town to get some inspiration. In between the booths of master shops and universities from all over Germany I found one of the Auswärtiges Amt (Ministry for External Affairs). A nice gentleman explained that the Auswärtiges Amt has its own academy where once a year bachelor studies begin to train a new generation of employees. He advised me to click through the different job descriptions on the website and see if I liked any. Enthusiasm and talent for languages were a big PRO when applying. Alright!

I did as he suggested and fell in love with the jobdescription of Konsulatssekretär*in (Ambassy secretary). People in that position are the first point of contact for their fellow countrymen when they enter or call an ambassy. A German living in the Netherlands, for instance, might contact them for a new passport or as a lose their driver’s license on holiday in Vietnam. Another absolute bonus of the job was the fact taht apparrently people in this position are expected to switch cities and countries every four years in order to prevent involvement and minimise the risk for corruption. So, if I ever got this job I could see a new country, learn a new language and experience a new culture every four years. I was sold!

Each year the Academy of the Auswärtiges Amt offers 25 people the oppertunity to follow the Bachelor studies to become a Konsulatssekretärïn. Generally, each year there are between 2000 and 2500 applicants. Thus, a fairly involved application process is needed to weed out who actually stands a chance. The first step in this process is the written application, I had to send in my CV as well as a letter stating why I would like the opportunity in German, Englisch and French. I made it through that first round and was invited to attend one of the selection days that were set up in a number of cities all over Germany. My father dorve me to Hannover, where he then spend the day walking around the city, while I took tests. A language skill test each for English and French, and a cognitive or psychological test.  The latter was desigend to test logical and lateral thinking and how applicants handled stress, as the test was intended to be completed in 3 hours but we only were given 2.5. We learned this after every last person had handed in their test paper.

Some oft he questions reminded me of the riddles we used to tease each other with in primary school:

You have to act out everything I say. Open that (imaginary) door. Okay, so, you’re standing in a room with a little cupboard in it. The cupboard has four drawers, open the first one. There’s a hat in it. Put it on. Close that drawer and open the second one. You find a knife, take it out and cut off your head. You can put it under your arm. Now, put the knife back and close the drawer. Open the third one. There is a picture frame in it, place it on the cupboard. Close the drawer. Open the last and lowest drawer. You find a rose in it. Smell the rose.

Of course, the gag is that you cut of your head and put it under your arm, so, you would have to hold the imaginary rose under your arm and not to your nose. If you don’t you lose and all the kids laugh. Good fun. The riddles and questions in the test were more complex but of a similar nature. We also were asked to judge several statements.

All pigs are pink. Peter’s car is pink. All cars are pigs.

True or false?

These statements, too, became more complex and complicated as the test went on.By the end of the day I just wanted my bed.

It took several weeks for the results to get back, but to my surprise I was invited to the last selection round on the grounds of the Auswärtiges Amt in Berlin. The las 250 applicants were asked to prove themselves individually and as part of groups during a one day assessment centre. The day was a mix of answering questions and mastering tasks. But it started with me and roughly seven other people in a waiting room off the lobby of the Academy. As we were talking to each other I quickly realised that nearly all of them were more qualified than I was. While I only had my highest level English and French classes to boast with, there were candidates who had spent half their in Greece, or already worked for Doctor without borders in several African countries. One of them just graduated with a Bachelor degree in Scandinavia studies and was fluent in Norwegian and Icelandic. I really didn’t think I stood a chance against them. So, it didn’t really shock me when I received a rejection a few weeks before graduating high school. Although, I was disappointed, I also realised that I was one of the last 250 applicants and that I got the chance to see the Academy and the grounds of the Auswärtiges Amt. How many people can say that?

And there was something in my rejection letter that gave me a reason to smile and be proud: I was invited to apply again, if I wanted to. I was advised to see some more of the world and become more experienced first, but I could apply again. This was big news because the rule of thumb is, that you cannot re-apply if you get rejected in the last selection-round. Something to do with your personality and ability to represent a country. So, getting the opportunity to do it again after studying something else first, was amazing!

So, I didn’t go to the Auswärtiges Amt right after school, why am I writing about it, then?Simple: I still wanted to do this job and live that life. But before I could do that I had to go out and experience… the world? So, I decided to study abroad (in the Netherlands) and to study something that might be helpful to a Konsulatssekretärin.

And my university/college experience in Enschede will be the subject of the next post.