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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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Black Friday!

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Apparently my last post was roughly a month ago. My hospital has been offering pretty generous hours lately, and while I've been making decent money, the work coupled with my long commute leaves me pretty drained by the end of the day. Hopefully, I'll be able to alleviate this situation once I have a permanent job and move out of my parents' house.

Anyway, if I haven't mentioned this before, the period between the beginning of October to the end of January is my favorite time of year. This is because all my favorite holidays and my birthday fall during this four month period. Last Thursday, I had a relaxing Thanksgiving filled with family time and food. Yesterday was Black Friday, signaling the beginning of my favorite time of year to shop.

While I do like to save money, I'm not hardcore enough to do something like pitch a tent in front of Best Buy in order to get a cheap television (which I saw on the way home from breakfast Thanksgiving morning). I have nothing against these people, and in fact wish I could actually wake up that early enough on Black Friday morning. This year, my dad somehow managed to get up at 5am to get a deal on a Christmas tree. While I may try braving the cold and crowds someday, for now I'd rather stay under my warm sheets on Black Friday morning. There's always Cyber Monday and the new Small Business Saturday.

As has been the case for several years now, I spent Black Friday in San Francisco to watch the Union Square tree lighting ceremony and do a little Christmas shopping. While the deals usually aren't as good on Black Friday afternoon, I usually go to the city for the holiday shopping experience. In the end I got some makeup items for myself and some giftcards, though I ended up returning the giftcards after my cheap boyfriend kindly told me I could get up to a 10% discount online (more on that in a future entry). I also got some basics from Old Navy after the obscenely long checkout lines finally thinned at 10pm. Here's a tip for shopping at Old Navy: If you can't find your size in a certain item, just buy a different size at sale price. You can exchange it for the correct size once they restock!

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to update this more frequently since I probably won't be working as many hours this month. Happy Holidays!

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