My Tips for Writing EER Bullets

Several FAST (First and Second Tour) Officers (also known as ELOs, Entry-Level Officers), recently asked me for advice on writing EER bullet points. It made me realize that although I have several advice posts about writing the EER statements themselves, I've never done a post about the bullet points so I thought I'd fill in that gap here. For those who may not know, EERs are our Employee Evaluation Reports upon which Department of State Foreign Service promotion decisions are based. We do at least one per year (and in rare cases more frequently depending on whether a supervisor changed or there were outside circumstances that led to more). I was promoted from 04 to 03 (as Foreign Service grades weirdly count backwards so as we move up the number moves down) at my first look, meaning the first chance a promotion panel reviewed my file to consider whether I should be promoted, so I'd like to think I know what makes a good entry-level EER, at least.

Ideally, a FAST Officer will have a good rater (usually the immediate supervisor) and reviewer (usually the supervisor's supervisor but sometimes the Deputy Chief of Mission known as the DCM, section head, or someone else) who actually write their portion of the EER. I've heard horror stories of bosses who don't write any of it and hapless ELOs who have to write not only their own statement but the two others on their EER that should be written by their chain of command, but thankfully that has never happened to me. If your rater and reviewer are actually writing their portion, they will almost always ask for bullet points from you about the things you want them to write about. This is a crucial part of the process that, in my opinion, takes just as much skill as writing the EER itself. So here's my advice to newer diplomats for EER bullets:

• Meet with your rater and reviewer early to find out their preferences for bullets, including timeline. DIfferent bosses will have different preferences: some will want "meaty bullets" that are written like paragraphs they can copy and paste as a working draft of their statement, others will want very concise memory joggers about things you did, and most will want something in between. If you don't get a strong steer, I would err on the side of providing more substantive information since nobody will care more about your EER than you do. Typically, you will share all your bullet points in one document that shows what you will write about, what your rater will write about, and what your reviewer will write about all together. Get these to your rater and reviewer on time so you aren't already running behind before the statements are even drafted.
• Know when to hold your ground and when to let go. Some raters and reviewers will have very strong opinions about which examples they think each person should cover in their section of your EER. I find the vast majority of the time it's not worth pushing back, because if they write about the examples that stand out to them then they will naturally write better. In some cases, you might feel they didn't have full visibility on your work or only the rater or reviewer could do the example justice - in that case, it's okay to challenge their preference. At the end of the day, it's your EER and you should get the final say.
• Keep space constraints in mind. The rater has the longest statement, followed by the employee. The reviewer's statement is significantly smaller. As a result, I wouldn't give a reviewer more than three bullet points because there simply isn't space. The rater should have the most bullet points, followed by the employee. Some people argue two examples very fleshed out is enough for an employee or rater statement, but I strongly disagree and think more examples are better (as long as you're not going overboard and trying to cram in ten per statement).
• Make sure you address all the core precepts in every EER, something you can see at the bullet point stage. You can find the core precepts on the Department of State intranet, from your CDO, or from your office or post HRO. Although the promotion board that decides whether to promote you generally looks at the past five EERs, I think there's plenty of space to address all the precepts every year. When I make my own EER bullets each year, I color code them by precept and review it to see if I'm missing any precepts. If so, I reframe some examples or add ones that showcase the missing precept. (Note: I know there's a lot of confusion this year about whether the DEIA - Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility - precept will remain. It's not worth speculating or trying to find out on social media. Just keep checking with your office or post HR team or the American Foreign Service Association known as AFSA, the Foreign Service union that routinely negotiates the precepts.)
• Only include the minimum context needed to understand your accomplishments. The vast majority of EER bullets I read from newer officers focus way too much on context and not enough on impact. If there are factors that make your post or job particularly challenging, you can include those. But those should only be a few sentences, not entire paragraphs. The promotion board is evaluating you, not the position itself, so make sure the vast majority of your bullets also talk about what you did and not just things about post or your office.
• Focus on what you did and results, not on outputs and titles. Don't just tell me you coordinated the National Day event, but tell me what that entailed and what the outcome was. Perhaps the event enabled a successful introduction of a new Ambassador, opening doors to higher-level follow-on meetings than have been historically possible. If you tell me you were chair of the FAST Committee, that's not as impactful as telling me that as chair of the FAST Committee, you provided essential public speaking training for 20 FAST colleagues that gave them the skills necessary to promote U.S. priority messaging to hundreds of youth through the Embassy Speakers Program. Even better if those speaker programs increased applicants to U.S. exchanges by a certain percentage or improved perception of the United States by a good margin. Or maybe your Consular cooperation with local authorities reduced fraud and increased awareness of visa scams. Whatever your job is, there is some way to show impact and that should already be in there in the bullets.
• Don't just cover special projects, but make sure your core work is well represented in your EER bullets. Most people will raise an eyebrow at an officer in a Consular section whose EER doesn't reference Consular work. If you only write about official visits and other special projects, it will give the impression that that was your only priority and you may have neglected your regular job duties. It's worth remembering the promotion panel will see your Work Requirements Statement including your position description and title when they read your EER. I personally think your core work should be reflected in the bullets of all your statements if possible: the employee, the rater, and the reviewer. If that's not possible, only the reviewer might be able to get away with only focusing on special projects since the space they have is much smaller.
• Ask mentors to see their EER bullets as examples. I always share my EERs and EER bullet points with mentees because I think it's helpful to see the evolution of bullet points to statements to final, polished product.

This is a non-exhaustive list of EER bullet point advice, but I hope it's helpful for any readers out there still relatively new to the process. I benefitted from my own mentors guiding me when I was new, and I'm happy to pay it forward. Happy drafting!

Cruisin' into 2025: Highlights from Our Mauritius to Singapore Cruise

M, S, and I cruised into 2025 on a 17-day Mauritius to Singapore cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line. Our ports of call included Port Louis, Mauritius; Pointe des Galets, Réunion (French territory); Antsiranana, Madagascar; Port Victoria, Seychelles; Malé, Maldives; Phuket, Thailand; Penang, Malaysia; Port Klang, Malaysia; and Singapore. We covered a lot of ocean and had plenty of days at sea, too, which were great for disconnecting from the outside world, practicing my 2024 resolution of mindfulness, and getting my 2025 resolutions to write every day and embrace the joy of missing out (JOMO) off to a strong start.

17 days is by far the longest we've ever cruised at once, but time passed so much more quickly with S in tow. Our kiddo is still too young for us to drop him off at the onboard kids' club, so our days are naturally divided into his wake windows, nap time, and sleep time (when we get to go down the hall for a dinner date thanks to babycam technology). M and I are quite opposite cruise personalities: he prefers to stay on the ship as much as possible and do the same things he knows he'll like, while I want to get off the ship and explore every port. I took full advantage of the opportunity to have outdoor adventures. The air quality was excellent, and I saw some stunning natural phenomena my pictures don't do full justice.

It was really unique celebrating the holidays including Christmas and New Year's Day on a cruise ship. Norwegian Cruise Line did a great job making the holidays feel special, with gingerbread villages, a Santa, a New Year's Party, interdenominational church and Hannukah volunteer-led religious services, a Holiday Spectacular performance, and more. I had so much fun twisting balloons into candy canes with S and introducing him to Santa's elves around the ship. We also sang a lot of Christmas songs (his favorites are Silent Night, Jingle Bells, and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town), and he saw the Grinch for the first time (both on repeat on various TVs around the ship and at least one passenger dressed as the Grinch on Christmas Day).

In this post, I'll just cover some of my personal highlights. We loved Mauritius and flew in from Dubai a few days before the cruise started. We made it more of a family beach vacation to recover from the stress of air travel, and before we knew it our couple of days were up and it was time to board. I can't say we had the smoothest onboarding process, with a long wait outside in a hot and humid tent with a toddler I would not recommend, but thankfully once we got on the ship we quickly found our room and were able to get S's sleep set-up in place. When we travel, we use an inflatable toddler mattress under a blackout tent called the Slumberpod, into which we slide a white noise machine and a babycam that sends a notification to our phones when it detects movement or sound. This has changed our travel game.

I felt like I could've spent a week at least in Réunion since the nature was so stunning and the climates so diverse given differences in elevation. I booked an excursion to visit Piton de la Fournaise Volcano and I did not regret it. The drive was absolutely gorgeous and our knowledgeable tour guide explained to us on the way there and back the island's important history. A few tidbits that stuck with me included the cruelty of some of the French slavers who had lived on the island, one of whom was a woman so notorious for her evil treatment of the people she enslaved that the islanders said after she died and confessed her sins to the devil, he was so shocked at her monstrous acts that the volcano erupted. I also learned about a church on the island that's become a pilgrimage site after one eruption that destroyed several houses in the same village miraculously split into two streams just before pouring inside the church and never damaged the building. The tour guide also shared with us some songs exemplifying Sega music, which originated among enslaved people and is typically sung in the island's Creole.

Despite being one of the most active volcanos in the world, Piton de la Fournaise was inactive when I was there. There were a myriad of hiking trails in and around the vast volcano itself. We saw families and friends camping and having picnics in the area, which I thought was quite brave given the enormous amount of flying insects we experienced at the top. If I had had more time, I would've done a proper hike but with the limited time I had I took a brisk stroll down one of the hiking paths and turned back in time to make it to the tour bus. It was a beautiful view, with wildflowers dotting the volcanic rock formations and volcanic ash filling the valleys.

In Madgascar, I reserved a spot on another nature excursion, this time to the famous red tsingy. The tsingys are laterite (i.e. reddish clay) sandstone formations shaped by wind and water erosion. The view of the blue sky above, red tsingy below, and greenery around the edges was breathtaking. I learned that "tsingy" usually refers to a specific limestone formation and in that sense the red tsingys are not real tsingys at all since they are made of sandstone.

Although they didn't put it this way on my tour, I read later that the red tsingys are the result of massive anthropogenic environmental degradation, specifically slash-and-burn agricultural practices. It's a sad origin story, but thankfully I learned tourism fees now contribute to sustainability efforts.

We were also lucky enough to spot a chameleon in the wild. Our tour guide explained that in his culture, chameleons are considered to carry the souls of departed ancestors and those who harm them will be punished with bad luck. Different villages and different parts of Madagascar have different understandings of the chameleon, with some believing they are evil.

In Port Victoria in the Seychelles and Malé in the Maldives we threw out my usual method of a detailed plan and just explored the port town together as a family. The highlight was the National Botanical Garden in the Seychelles, which was beautiful and within walking distance of the ship. We saw the double coconut (the world's largest seed) and plenty of giant tortoises.

S insisted on calling the giant tortoises "big big big BIG turtles" despite us explaining the difference between turtles, tortoises, and terrapins: a nuance I'm sure he'll appreciate someday but that day is not today. In the Maldives, we walked around the capital of Malé, something we didn't have time to do on our last trip to the country.

In Penang, Malaysia we did a self-guided walking tour of the local Georgetown area that included a lot of Chinese heritage sites and an awesome historic jetty where people still live and operate shops today. When we reached Port Klang, Malaysia the following day I booked a private car to take us around for the day.

We visited the stunning Hindu temple inside Batu Caves, had local food and the best milk I've ever tasted fresh from their own dairy cows at nearby Farm Cafe, and then explored Kuala Lumpur City Centre a bit with a stop in the Petrosains Discovery Centre, a family-friendly science museum. I don't know who got more of a kick out of Petrosains: M or S! They had plenty of simulations and science experiments for adults and educational play options for all ages of kids.

In Phuket, Thailand, we took a casual family walk around to explore the port area of town, ate lunch at a restaurant with a view (where I had the best pad thai of my life), and then I booked a massage at Moontree Elemental Spa. It was such a divine and relaxing day!

Our last stop on this trip was Singapore. We only had one day to enjoy the city, but M immediately fell in love (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows M and knows Singapore). He marvelled, "Even the street food vendors take tap-to-pay credit cards!" "See how everyone waits their turn to use the crosswalk?" "It's city convenience for me and greenery for you all in one."

We went multiple times to the excellent Lau Pa Sat Hawker Centre, which had so many varieties of food I feel like I could go there every day for a month and still barely scratch the surface of what they had to offer. We had some delicious pork and chicken with nasi lemak, a Malaysian-style coconut and pandan rice, wonderful srping rolls and summer rolls from a Vietnamese shop, and some of the best ice cream I've ever had in my life from a place called Creme & Cone. My yogurt lavender and dark chocolate flavors were phenomenal, and S loved sharing them with me.

My favorite stop in Singapore (which you can probably tell by the disproportionate photos in this post of it) was the Gardens by the Bay. Even though I'm not much of a gardener, I love being around plants and especially flowers. I love their variety, their scents, and their opportunity to teach us about the natural world. So as soon as I heard of Gardens by the Bay I put it on our list as a must-see while we were in Singapore. We experienced the Floral Fantasy, Flower Dome, and Cloud Forest before ending our night with the Skytree light show.

Floral Fantasy was an artistic flower exhibit whose themes change depending on the seasons. I was blown away when I learned that none of the enormous, beautiful displays we saw used any fake flowers but they were all real. The current showing happened to be an official collaboration with Disney, and S even recognized a few of the characters like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh.

Next came the Flower Dome, which was exactly what it sounds like: an enormous greenhouse-style dome with gardens upon gardens of flowers. They were winding down the Christmas-specific decorations while we were there, but to my surprise and delight they had an impressionist painting-inspired temporary exhibit I was able to explore.

My mom is an excellent gardener and the Flower Dome reminded me so much of her, from the luscious clusters of hydrangeas to the replicas of some of her favorite impressionist paintings from Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and others. They did some brilliant things with the art exhibit where they created spaces to sit and observe the works in motion, collaborated with contemporary flower artists inspired by impressionism, included Singaporean art and culture, and even incorporated the sense of smell into the experience.

The Cloud Forest was the most scientifically informative stop of our visit, where I learned that there is actually a type of forest called a cloud forest and it wasn't just a catchy name for that particular attraction. We saw so many rare plants and learned about the different levels of a cloud forest and what we're most likely to find there. Many of those plants I've never seen before in the wild or in an exhibit, and it always fills me with awe to think about how diverse our planet is.

Once we were done walking around, we watched a Skytree light show where large artifical trees showed off a programmed light display to a performance highlighting Asian culture. I was so surprised and touched to hear "Arirang", the classic Korean folk song, among the melodies. I'm glad I got to share that special memory with M and S.

Although our time in each stop was short, our whole trip was quite long and by the end we were ready to go home, sleep in our own bed, and get more of a routine going. I feel so lucky to be able to travel with my family. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year to all the readers out there! I hope your 2025 is off to a peaceful start.