Ambassador/Diplomat

Well I know for South Africa you'd need to study a degree,
Such as law or Political Sciences,
Then fro there you have to enroll with the government diplomatic department,
And work your way up,
It'd take you at least 3-4 years to become eligible

This is only for South Africa.

 

As Mzansi said, in South Africa, and most anywhere, if you want to have a life in diplomacy you need to either study Law, Political Sciences or just plain Diplomacy.
Such studies take about 3-5 years, depending on where you go. I would reckon 4 years in South Africa.
I’ve met a few ambassadors who’ve done economics degrees and even one studied liberal arts.
Basically, to become an ambassador, you need to work for your countries Foreign Affairs ministry/office/department. You start working for them and basically, after a few years, you can apply for a posting abroad. As a young person, it’s quite rare to get them, as they tend to favor older people with more experience. The South African ambassador here is 40 and this is his first posting. Of course, ambassador is a big job. You can be sent to work for the embassy and not be the ambassador. You’ll have to do that for a few years before you’re eligible for an ambassadorship.
Some people get lucky though, and get an early posting. So you never know.
Hope I’ve helped in some way.

 

My cousin wanted to be an ambassador when she was maybe a sophomore in college (not sure if she still wants to be one now, though lol). I'm not sure she realized that one does not just become ambassador fresh out of college, but whatever. She majored in Law and PoliSci, with a minor in the language of the country where she wanted to work. She then went to law school and got her JD. Unfortunately, despite being at the top of the class in everything (or so her parents said, and I have no problem believing them), she picked a crappy law school, so I doubt that she'll end up an ambassador, but hey who knows. At this point, she's a lawyer.

Basically, the take-home message is Law/PoliSci, and be the best you can be and that's going to maximize your chances of doing what you want to end up doing. Picking a reputed college would surely help as well.

 

Well, I don't wanna discourage you but I'm afraid it's not that easy. You see, I don't know about South Africa, but in most countries (certainly in mine) ambassadors are often appointed from the very top and many times those appointments obey to political favors thus not many ambassadors are career diplomats.

However as some poster above said there are many positions you could apply for in your country's foreign affairs' ministry and who knows maybe one day you will be an ambassador, I mean it's not impossible, I'm just saying you gotta be REALLY well connected.

As for what to study I don't think you gotta have certain degree, tho you certainly need one. My advice would be to study law, since it's pretty related and you could then specialize (hope that word exists) on internacional law or international relations. And if all this diplomacy thing doesn't work in the end well then you got a pretty big field to employ yourself. Oh yes, also it's very important that you become fluent in at least 2 of the UN'S official languages. English is a most, French or Spanish would be good, but if you could get to master chinese-mandarin would be really good as not many people are fluent and due to the importance of that area nowadays it would make you highly competitive in the diplomatic "world".

Anyway good luck!

 

A studies in international relations would be something to look into.