Le Petit Prince Was SO Not Worth It.

There are lots of reasons I should have studied Spanish. The Cinco de Mayo parties, for one. The global usefulness, for another. Oh, Hmm, MY FUTURE, say.

In my own defense, I was thinking long term when, as an innocent sixth grader, I chose to follow the big imagination of Le Petit Prince down the French track. It just wasn’t the right long-term. I was thinking glamor, fashion, semester in Paris. Turns out I should have been thinking of resumes.

J, tired as ever of me bitching about the at-times audacity of my daily life at work, today forwarded me an awesome job opportunity as a writer/editor with the government. It’s here in DC, matches my interests and qualifications to a near T, pays a considerable amount for federal work, and though I’d planned to hang on here for a little longer, I thought eh, I’ll look into it.

The key requirements: US Citizenship, background check. Yup, yup. All clear. Eligibility and qualification requirements: “one year general experience.” Got that and then some.

It wasn’t until the substantive application that in “in English and Spanish” started cropping up in questions about past writing experience. I was just skimming though it—I’m still at work, you see—and I’m awfully glad, because before long it asked me to answer with an essay response in both English and Spanish.

It would have been one thing if, in the general or key requirements, it would have said “Spanish fluency.” But it didn’t. It would have made sense if this was a job with the Spanish embassy, or a committee on Latin American Affairs. But it wasn’t. This was just a normal, “hey come work for the feds” type of posting. And now I’m kind of mad.

I would be so great for this job except for the whole not bilingual part. As far as I’m concerned, if the federal government wants to make Spanish fluency an inherent requirement of federal jobs, it should damn well make studying Spanish a requirement in public schools. Students should not be allowed to be seduced by cartoons and crepes if it’s going to harm the country later. (And yes, it may well be an extrapolation for me to equate my non-candidacy with harm to the country. I would have been fantastic, though. It’s a loss to the American People that I do not speak Spanish. If I could, I’d clearly get this job and save the world. Or something.)

Dear, sweet Little Prince, you were great and all. But you were a big mistake.