Featured Post

Tips for New Social Work Graduate (MSW) Students

-
Image
  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 an...
25 comments

We're #1! We're #1!

-
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?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tips for New Social Work Graduate (MSW) Students

-
Image
  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 an...
Read more

Why I Want To Leave Social Work

-
Image
It's been a while since I've updated this blog. I actually wasn't sure if I would actually come back to it, but given recent events I have some free time on my hands and should keep occupied. With that said, let's cut to the chase. I'm burned out. After 10 years of being a social worker, I'm ready to leave the field. A few of the reasons are as follows:  1) Emotional and physical exhaustion  As we all know, social work is an extremely demanding job with high caseloads, emotionally taxing situations, and strict deadlines. Depending on how busy I am and how much caffeine I've had, I'm usually running on high alert so I could finish everything by the end of my shift and sit in traffic. Being in a continual state of stress has started wearing on me, and I find that as I age I'm not as physically and emotionally resilient as I used to be.   The social work profession promotes self-care as a way to prevent burnout. This is nice and all, but how can you ta...
Read more

A Day in the Life of a Medical Social Worker

-
Image
One of the problems of being a medical social worker in a hospital is that my work is so varied that people get confused as to what I actually do! To give you a better idea of my job functions, here's a rundown of a typical day at work. At some point, I may write different versions based on what unit I'm working on and what model of social work the hospital uses. For a comprehensive overview of the medical social work profession, please go here: About Social Services at a Hospital A Typical Day in the Life of a (not so) Cheap Medical Social Worker  6:20am: Alarm clock goes off. I hit the snooze button. 6:30am: I drag myself out of bed, wash up, throw some clothes on, and slap my makeup on my face. 7:00am: I run out the door and proceed to sit in traffic for the next hour. 8:00am: I arrive at work, clock in, and head to my desk to print out the hospital census. After figuring out who all the new patients are, I go through each one to determine if they ne...
Read more