I am in the inaugural class of Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) who are entering a new era of international affairs. As graduates were announcing jokingly that they were graduating from "Zoom University," new FSOs are feeling something similar--we are graduating into age of "Google Hangouts Diplomacy," or to put a spin of grandeur on it, "Virtual Diplomacy."

In 2019, I joined the 1,600 FSOs serving with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) diplomatic corps as a Health Development Officer. Starry eyed and ready to pursue a career that I have been preparing for the last three years through intensive academic training in economics, epidemiology, statistics, research methods, geospatial analysis, the art of public speaking, and foreign languages, I was ready to pursue a traditional career as a U.S. diplomat abroad. My in-person orientation lasted for about six weeks where, along with my incoming class of FSOs and U.S. diplomats, would learn more about the Agency through briefings from leaders at the highest levels, learning about our Administrator's priorities, how we fit into the larger goals of U.S. national security, and agency processes that we were to master by the end of our year in Washington, D.C. and after our first post.

I would be sitting in the Bureau for Global Health, which initially was in Crystal City, Virginia which was one bus ride and a few metro stops away. It was a vibrant neighborhood with lots of shops, indoor malls, and the offices of our implementing partners just blocks away. Soon after I arrived, the Bureau finalized its new location closer to the Ronald Reagan Building which was where USAID's headquarters was housed. Our building was new with glass walls lining the meeting rooms, bright, and with lots of great space and natural light. This was in contrast to our old building which looked like your typical office building--all inclusive of the gray cubicle walls.

In March, we received an email that we were to start teleworking as an entire Agency because of the rising COVID-19 cases. I had grown up through the SARS scare, though I was too young to understand what was going on besides the fact that it was mainly concentrated in China and Hong Kong. Then of course when I entered college, I remember the swine flu and how students were told to stay in their dorms if they had any symptoms. Those two soon became a faded memory, and then there was MERS-CoV which seemed physically distant. But COVID-19, this felt different.

Soon after, many people, including myself, started to realize the impacts of this on our families. I remember my mom calling me asking me if I knew of a way to get toilet paper, which to this day still baffles me on why people were flying to the stores to hoard it when there was very little indication that the stocks in the U.S. would run out besides the fact that the quantification of stocks did not prepare for such a rise in demand so supply was not able to catch up. Anyway, I then went online trying to purchase some for my family back home. I went on the most popular websites, but after seeing red bolded letters--"sold out"--almost everywhere, I started to go to the second and third pages on Google. I went on websites that looked like it could steal your credit card information just by clicking on the home page, but I was desparate. I finally got to type in my credit card information in time for a 24 pack, but as soon as I pressed submit it was sold out. This happened multiple times until my order finally went through on this website that looked like it was created the same time MySpace was born. I waited for days, then finally got the email that it was also sold out and so I received a refund. This would be the first of many frustrations to come.

After the complete realization that the pandemic is here to stay, there was no other way around it but to adapt. Surrounding me were stories of people getting infected or exposed, countries locking their borders until further notice, and diplomats evacuated from U.S. embassies and missions globally to return home. Hope of me flying to my first post seemed slimmer by the day, which was the opposite of what my waist line was experiencing. I kept my naturally optimistic personality prevail, and towards the end of the summer I started to receive signals that I would be flying out to Manila on schedule in October. A part of me was elated, but another part wanted to continue staying where I was comfortable which was surrounded by friends that I had made in D.C. Eventually, I was able to get an economy class ticket to my first post where COVID-19 was starting to abate.

During my first night, I remember being frustrated because I could not get the local food delivery apps to work with my foreign credit card. They all wanted a local bank, and I would never be able to get one anyway because of the strict requirements in the Philippines. But by the grace of something much bigger than myself --though in reality it might just been something with my credit card company realizing that nobody wanted to steal my money to buy a two gyros with extra spicy sauce. Once it arrived, I almost inhaled it because it was so delicious and I was starving. In my defense, for those who are quietly judging my food choice for a first meal, it was the only option still open at that time--I also saw that McDonald's was an option, but I had a lot of self control and so I waited an entire day has passed until buying one.

I started my career with the Mission soon after arrival, attending orientation and getting my administrative tasks done--which was much more work than I expected. At this time, even though COVID-19 cases were stable in the country, most of our meetings and calls with partners were still online. A very small number of events were hosted in person, and so I started to begin feeling like I could have done this back in Washington. The big difference was that I am now in a much nicer living environment, and I get to meet my co-workers in person albeit only a few days a week and only if they were in the office at the same time I was scheduled to show up in person. Meetings with our government partners were also conducted online, and as a mission with a regional portfolio, I conducted meetings with the government in Papua New Guinea also online. As a virtual diplomat, to me this was the norm--not the exception.

My career was enabled by those before me, with the first piece of legislation creating the new "Foreign Service of the United States of America" through The Rogers Act which was passed in 1924, changing the way Foreign Service Officers were hired at the Department of State. Fifty years after the Foreign Assistance Act was passed in 1961 and the formal establishment of the U.S. Agency for International Development which was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy, I would be part of the diplomatic corps to represent the U.S. abroad.

During trainings in Washingtion, we were trained on protocols, how to host events, and other key responsibilities expected of us. However, what was missing was how to still exercise this type of traditional diplomacy through a screen. This is exactly what I and other USAID FSOs are a part of in this moment. I am more familiar with email addresses than I am with actual addresses. That feeling of being surrounded by history as I walk through government buildings and when I'm meeting with multilateral partners is still foreign to me. While I am adapting to this new environment, I am reminded that our mission to provide assistance to our partner nations has not changed.