Hello Class, although I do enjoy winters and I am looking forward to our snow storm, I wanted to remind everyone that spring will soon be here. This spring time shot can serve as a metaphor for one's future career as it will certainly be blooming and taking shape over the next couple of years.
Along those lines, please respond to the following questions within the same post.
1. What role(s) in social work do you see yourself doing once you leave UNH? Perhaps this is not formed and you have a few ideas. Briefly share along with any questions, hopes, fears, etc. that you have.
2. Share how/what you identify with in the Gelman and Lloyd article. How is your level of anxiety going into second term, or anticipating next year's placement?
Please post a comment to at least three classmates after reading theirs. Be sure to include everyone and remember, BREVITY, try to be succinct in your thoughts, as you might be in a classroom discussion. Sorry to miss everyone tomorrow, but we will be back for next week.
My thoughts on your comments below.
First, thanks to all for your thoughtful posts. The pleasure of working with Social Work graduate students is the level of engagement you all bring to your learning and work. As you all saw, there were a number of themes on the career end from continuing training to reach a focused goal to seeing other possibilities of interest. I think you are all right on as there is no one way of moving through your career. Someone noted the varied jobs of the faculty. While I started off with specific goals of working clinically, the policy arena opened up for me as I entered a management position in my late twenties and realized I enjoyed the organizational and macro-level work. I also did not necessarily see myself as becoming a researcher as well, but that too caught hold. The one thing that did help along the way was once I had a goal, I researched it and the varied ways of getting there, in other words, I tried to become an expert on the position. So...what's the take home, allow your interests to drive you and certainly allow for time to discover your interests if you are not sure. There is no rule for needing to know what you want to do with your whole life (or latter half of life for some of us). I recently suggested to a student who was graduating to just get any job and to buy more time to make a decision on their early career path. Times are a changing with employment and many will have multiple careers over the course of their life. One other thing to know your classmates will be your colleagues and connections for years to come!
Ahh anxiety. I love that many of you noted that anxiety is important and that within anxiety is excitement. It is both a wonderful and at times debilitating experience. I'm glad to hear many are settling in as compared with the first weeks of school and placement. Anxiety alerts us to novel stimuli and so it is expected at some level whenever we encounter new experiences. We would all be dead without it! Anxiety is also very personal as we all come into the world with a unique set of genetics predisposed to more or less anxiety and then raised in families that can heighten or lessen our experience of the world. At the root of a lot of anxiety, at least within the social work field are fears of shame and humiliation, that we will be exposed for all that we don't know. While it takes time, I suggest working to allow permission for not knowing and getting comfortable acknowledging it. I am o.k. with saying to clients and students, "I don't know, but I wold really like to figure that out". It relieves much anxiety and allows the brain more power to reflect rather than getting caught up in hiding one's not knowing. After all, you can't know what you don't know. This also models for clients the just feeling of not knowing and seeking help or support.
O.K., just a few my thoughts. I hope you are catching a break with the snow storms. See you all next week!
