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Showing posts from April, 2015

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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

Santa Clara County Social Worker Reclassification: Fight for Title Protection!

It's no secret that I am a huge proponent of social worker title protection. As I've mentioned on this blog in past posts , I strongly believe that lack of national title protection is why social workers are underpaid, because this allows non-social workers to take social worker jobs and hence depress our wages.  Never mind the potential for disaster when you have non-social workers attempting to perform social work tasks. Hence, I was infuriated when I received an e-mail informing me that a local Bay Area county is considering reclassifying social worker jobs to allow for individuals with masters degrees in counseling, psychology, and gerontology. Last I checked, an individual needed a nursing degree to be called a "nurse", and a law degree to be called a "lawyer". For me, it makes absolutely no sense that someone without a social work degree can be called a "social worker". Hours later, I had penned a letter which has since been e-mailed to