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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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I Need More Self-Care

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It's ironic that I wrote a post on self-care since I've been working so much lately! With my continued long commute and 5-6 day work weeks, work really took a toll on me these past few months. Things I experienced include:

Poor eating habits: I certainly engaged in lots of emotional eating this past month, mostly chocolate.

Increased acne: Probably from stress and lack of sleep.

Increased irritability and poor mood: Likely from lack of sleep and exhaustion from work.

Increased sleepiness: I've actually had to pull over and nap in my car several times during my afternoon commute. Not good!

Lack of productivity: This is demonstrated by things like my messy room and lack of blog updates!

This month, I'm definitely going to take a few days from work and perhaps take a trip somewhere. Self-care is something that should not be neglected by social workers. I know that I was not giving my best during these past few weeks. Hopefully after some recharging I'll come back refreshed and do better!

Comments

  1. shelly loseeApril 24, 2012 at 7:31 AM

    I hear ya! I was working about a million hours a week for awhile and realized that while I love what I do, it's not the only thing I want to do with my life. I started blogging right in the middle of that crazy schedule and can't believe how writing a blog has helped in so many ways-- totally an unexpected outcome!

    My blog is not all about social work, but social work seeps in a lot.

    This is the post that really started it all for me:
    http://seashelldownbytheseashore.blogspot.com/2011/10/me-at-my-desk-on-slow-day.html

    this one is more focused on SW:

    http://seashelldownbytheseashore.blogspot.com/2012/04/mission-statement.html

    Hang in there!

    ReplyDelete

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