constructive dissent

Chris got an e-mail this week that said this:

“Dear Christopher,

I am delighted to inform you that you have been selected to receive the W. Averell Harriman Dissent Award for 2006. This award, sponsored by AFSA and funded by the Harriman Foundation, is presented to a Foreign Service junior officer who has exhibited extraordinary accomplishment involving initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and constructive dissent.”

I am not too much of a gushing type of person, but this one really has me excited and proud and thrilled beyond words. And let's just admit it: VINDICATED! This finally makes all of the half-believed supportive bullshit that I've been spoon-feeding Christopher over the last year about how his job DOES actually mean something and that all of his hard work is NOT completely in vain actually appear to be true. Who knew? I was just trying to make him feel better, but I never actually BELIVED it!

This is actually an extraordinary honor, awarded to only one Junior Officer in the Foreign Service every year. Best of all, it comes to him from the American Foreign Service Association (sort of our union) for work that he has done that has gone against the status quo. I am extremely proud.

As always and with everything, it is largely about being in the right place at the right time and, most importantly, about having supervisors who take the initiative to make nominations. Lord knows that there are plenty of people out there working just as hard (many of them right here in Chennai). But I am extremely glad to learn that there is actually somebody listening at the other end of the black hole that Chris has been screaming into for the last 18 months.

Details about the stuff that led to this award are long and tedious and full of visa minutiae, but if you want to know those details, you can ask me and I'd be happy to tell you all about it.

The award also comes with cold hard cash. We're going on vacation!