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Tips for New Social Work Graduate (MSW) Students

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  Happy start of the school year! Perusing social media, I came across a NASW blog article called “Guide for the First Year Social Work Student”. This post provided lots of great information tailored for new undergraduate students interested in studying social work. I wanted to take that NASW post a bit farther and compile a list of tips specific to graduate students pursuing a masters in social work (MSW). In my opinion, graduate school is a completely different experience from undergraduate, so my hope is that these tips will serve to be beneficial. Tips for New Social Work Graduate (MSW) Students -Don’t worry about grades so much When I was in graduate school, one of my professors told a story about a straight A student who committed suicide several years after graduation. His point was that given the people we need to work with, we social workers need to focus less on being perfectionists (as demonstrated by obsessing over grades and test scores) and work on being empathetic and co
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We're #1! We're #1!

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While surfing the CNN.com website, I found a link that read Stressful jobs that pay badly. Clicking the link, I was not surprised to see what was number one on the list.

Being number one on this list is not something we should be proud of as social workers. Furthermore, a person with a masters degree should not be making $12 an hour. I understand that social workers are not in it for the money, but it becomes unacceptable when people with education levels this high can barely afford to support themselves.

As social workers, we are constantly advocating for the needs of our clients. It's time we advocated more for ourselves in ensuring better wages and working conditions. What kind of social workers would we be if we couldn't help ourselves?

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