Well, there I was in the Spring of 1981, basically up the creek without a boat, let alone a paddle. I was finishing up my BA in history, I didn't have a teaching certificate, and I couldn't afford grad school. Lovely. But I had one ace left up my sleeve, or so I thought. I nailed my first round Foreign Service exam and had a happy facility for languages, so I figured either State or the CIA would pick me up. So off I went to Germany, and after a couple of weeks of acclimatizing, off I went to the US embassy in Bonn to meet with a man from USAID (which meant he was on the TO&E chart under State but was actually CIA; bases covered). He noted off the bat that Utah State was not on the normal list of colleges they recruited from, at least not for nontechnical positions (STEM, STEM, STEM, STEM, STEM, STEM, STEM, STEM), he would look at me for my language skills. He then asked where I had gone on my mission. I said I wasn't LDS. I could see it on his face as he mentally ran my application packet through a shredder. (I've often wondered since if he was really that bad at maintaining a poker face or if he was deliberately giving me the signal. Another thing I'll never know.) The only reason I had gotten through the door was because they had thought I was Mormon.
The letter arrived a couple of weeks later. They thought I was a fine specimen, but they had no room at the inn at the moment, although they would certainly keep my application on file. Read, "You aren't Ivy League, you aren't LDS, we might be able to use you as an occasional asset sometime, but we will never let you into the company." My ace had been trumped, and now I was stuck with law school.
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