It's social work month! Each Sunday this month will be Social Work Sunday, where I'll be talking about my experience so far as a social worker. As I have mentioned before, I am working on my Master's in Social Work and will finally be graduating in August of this year after four years of working full time and attending school part-time. In the future I will be writing more posts about attending graduate school, being bilingual in social work, working with the Latinx community, and being previously undocumented (DACA) in the social work field. However, for now, I want to start with the basics. Here are five reasons why I decided to become a social worker.
1.) It's what I've always done.
As a first-generation, oldest child, I was (and still am) the go-to when it comes to helping my family with things like interpreting and educating. I didn't know it at the time, but when I began learning about basic social work skills such as organization, communication, brokering, and advocacy, I realized that I had been working on those skills all of my life. Whether it was interpreting at my school, explaining laws to my family, advocating for my parents at the doctor's office, filling out forms I was clearly too young to understand, and much more, if you're a first-generation immigrant, especially if you came to the U.S. at a young age, you have the basic skills needed for the field.
2. The skills are transferable
Since I'm graduating soon, I've been doing a lot of research on types of jobs in the field. So often we think that all you can do in the social work field is case management, working with children's services, or therapy, but that's not the case! The skills acquired in social work can be used anywhere because you learn how to work well with people, find resources, connect communities and individuals, understand policy, ethics, and working in a crisis.
3.) There's a need for bilingual social workers
In my graduate program cohort, I am the only Latinx, and in other cohorts, there may be one or two at the most. There are not enough bilingual social workers to cover the constant need, and this is seen at every professional level. Knowing two languages is always helpful, but in a field like social work, it's a big advantage.
4. There's flexibility in the type of work environment
One of the main reasons why I chose social work is because I didn't want to just be in one type of environment all my life. If you're a teacher, you're usually in a school. If you're a doctor, you're in a hospital or health clinic. However, as a social worker, you can be in any type of environment, including school social work, a university, hospital, hospice, non-profit, owning your own business, etc. I also like the fact that I can work with different ages and populations. If I want to focus on working with children, I can do that, and if I rather work with older adults or families, I can do that too! You can even be a researcher.
5. You'll never be out of a job!
People will always have a crisis, problem, or need. That's just human nature, and you can't replace socio-emotional skills with a robot (at least not for now).
Are you in the social work field or planning on going into the field? I want to know why you chose to be a social worker! Don't forget to pin this post and share it with a friend.
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