I happened to be at FSI yesterday, so I hung out in the back of the room for a few minutes of the 165th A-100 class’s Flag Day ceremony. Has it really been almost two years since I’ve been in their shoes? Wow.

I’ve updated Flag Day stories here with two 165th accounts — feel free to alert me to others I haven’t found.

To those of you who are thrilled with your assignment, congrats! It’ll be awesome, I’m sure. Please read no further.

For those of you who are less than thrilled, I promise you that your ultimate happiness will have little to do with how happy you were on Flag Day. Naturally, you bid based on city or language or job, but what impacts your experience most in the end are a bunch of things you have no way of knowing in advance: what your colleagues are like, how heavy your workload is, whether your family members mesh with other family members at post, and so on. Go in to the experience open-minded and you’ve got just as much of a shot of having a great tour as anyone else.

Plus, you’d be amazed how quickly two years flies by.