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Showing posts from February, 2011

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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 an...
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The Giving Tree

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Earlier this evening, my boyfriend (who is close to finishing his last quarter of graduate school) mentioned that he felt like the old man pictured on the last page of The Giving Tree . Not being able to recall this book from my childhood, I went ahead an looked up the Wikipedia article . The plot description nearly brought me to tears. Watching the following video all but pushed me over the edge: In fact, I could only watch portions of it because seeing the story unfold through animation was just so depressing. I suppose what saddened me most about this story were the sacrifices made by both the tree and the boy. In order to make the boy happy, the tree gradually allowed parts of her to be removed to be sold or constructed into a house and boat. The tree gave freely, while the boy simply took and took in return. Ultimately, only the tree's stump was left. The boy, on the other hand, sacrificed his carefree childhood spent with the tree to fulfill "adult" tasks such...
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New Look

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I spent the majority of today messing around with Blogger's different templates. As much as I enjoyed the polka dots, I feel that the new templates give my blogs a cleaner and fresher look. Maybe someday I'll learn CSS and design something really awesome involving polka dots. I have work tomorrow, so that means I should probably go to bed early instead of playing around with my blogs. In the meantime, check out my latest article on my Cheap Social Worker blog, which gives advice on balancing becoming a social worker career with addressing financial wants and needs. Have a great evening everyone!
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Balancing Financial Needs With Becoming a Social Worker

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Let me preface this article by stating that no one goes into social work thinking that they will become rich. Similarly, no one becomes a social worker thinking that they will have to struggle financially for the duration of their careers. There must be a balance between doing what one loves and having the money to pay the bills, feed the family, and engage in some quality self-care. While many social workers live within their means and are happy with their lifestyles, there are some that ultimately burn out and switch careers to earn better wages. This article provides advice on how one can balance becoming a social worker with wanting a higher standard of living. I'm sure some of these tips could be extrapolated towards other careers as well. Tip #1 : Evaluate the standard of life that you hope to have. There's nothing wrong with wanting a big house, luxury car, fancy wardrobe, private jet, and vacation house in the South of France. However, if you're expecting to ...
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Yet another new beginning...

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Hello, and welcome to Adventures of a (not so) Cheap Social Worker! Here, you'll find me talking about my life as a social worker, ranging from daily happenings to discussions pertaining to relevant social work issues to other random topics. I have a wide variety of interests and hobbies in addition to what I do for a living, so expect anything and everything on this blog! This blog is an off-shoot from my main site, (not so) Cheap Social Worker . Since I wanted to limit the scope of that site to money saving matters, this blog was created and all non-pertinent articles were moved here. Don't forget to check out my other blog and read about my adventures in making the most out of my social worker salary! I am pretty excited about this site and will make it a goal to post regular updates. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to have more material soon!
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Recent changes to this blog

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Lately, I've been thinking about the scope of this blog. While I enjoy writing about money saving tips and social work issues, I feel that having both topics on the same blog may be a little too much. Hence, I've decided to divide my writing into two different blogs! (not so) Cheap Social Worker will focus on my attempts to make the most of my social worker salary. This site will not just be for social workers, but for anyone who wishes to maximize fun while minimizing expenditures. Adventures of a (not so) Cheap Social Worker will function as my personal blog. Here, I will talk about happenings in my life along with random social work topics. As many in our field like to say, "Social work is not just a career, it's a passion!" As you can see, I have already moved posts leaning more towards social work and my personal life to my Adventures blog. I hope this new format works well for everyone, as I am pretty excited about this change!
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Bad Publicity Yet Again

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I stopped by the CNN.com website tonight, only to find this video on the front page: As much as I like Anderson Cooper and AC360, I found this entire video to be rather unsettling. Right from the beginning this report seemed to have a biased, condemnatory tone towards the medical staff caring for the baby and child protective services as a whole. While the parents may have felt that a great injustice was committed against them, I think that the hospital staff was completely appropriate in the manner they responded to this suspected shaken baby case. What surprises me, though, is the fact that the other child was actually placed in foster care for two weeks. Typically, removals are usually done only as a last resort and if a child is suspected of being in immediate danger. It's hard to say whether child protective services was justified in removing the second child, and I feel that there's more to this case than what was shown in the news report. What bot...
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