Last week I finished my first year of Social Work school. I joked to my friends that I am now half a social worker. In truth, something that I have learned this year is that I am already a social worker before I have my qualifications, but require the degree to develop knowledge and skill that is necessary to be a good social worker in the field.
I have learned a lot this year. I have also unlearned a lot this year, which is something that we don’t talk about enough. The process of unlearning is taking information that you thought you knew and reassessing based on the awareness you have developed. Unlearning is part of being a Social Worker. This much I know.
Part of being a growing person is being able to admit all the things we do not know, as well as all the things we had readily assumed. Every person has biases, it is what you do with them that matters. Crucially, unlearning biases and being conscious and committed to changing your own cultural assumptions is the cornerstone of being a social worker.
There are many other things I have learned this year as well. I have learned how bad a fit law school was for me. I have learned what it looks like to have more of a balance. Feeling inspired again has allowed me to grow and push myself to do things that I might not have done a year ago.
Mostly, I have learned how important and worthwhile this profession is, and how grateful I am to be pursuing it. Social work school was sort of in my peripheral vision, but once I found a love for Political Science and humanities subjects, pursuing advocacy and legislation felt like the natural route. I love learning and that hasn’t changed. But what I learned this year is how much I value working with people, around people, to help people.
I had many preconceptions about becoming a Social Worker before this year. And I grappled with many of those things at the beginning of the year. Mostly, I worried that pursuing Social Work was taking the ‘easy way out’. Now I am embarrassed that I believed that, because Social Work is by no means the easy way out.
As a society, we put corporate professions on a pedestal. When I was in law school I remembered noting the superiority that a lot of my classmates boasted. For the most part, I felt like an imposter, but I did still feel a lot of pride over the accomplishment of being qualified enough to be in law school.
That is not to say that it is not an achievement, because it is. But the bruise to my ego of switching out was noticeable to me. And it made me uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable because I wanted to believe that I did not have an ego, and it made me uncomfortable because I was embarrassed to have been demoted to the ranks of ‘not good enough’. My own perception of social work was skewed by the messages I received and my own internalization that social work was not good enough for me.
Yet, here I am, half a social worker later realizing that the ego I had and the shame I felt about pursuing Social Work was imposed by the messages I received and by my own faulty thinking. Instead I am proud that this is the path I have chosen. I love being a Social Worker and being able to help, guide, understand and practice empathy with every waking breathe. I chose this path and it chose me back and for that I am extremely grateful.
Social work is hard. You often meet people at the intersection of the worst moment of their lives. It is rewarding and it is also exhausting. Social work is fulfilling and can also be devastating. All of these things can be and are true. All of this to say that just because I am feeling the joy, doesn’t mean that it is by any means easy or not challenging. It is just that I am pursuing a path that fits. The joy in that is indescribable.
From my field work placement this year I learned about life, love, and loss. I learned about being brave and bold. And about the many, many different paths that life can take. I have met people who worked on the frontlines of medical innovation, government employees, teachers, businesspeople, lawyers, artists, dancers, performers, activists, doctors, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. I have met people who have devoted their lives to causes spanning an entire spectrum such as: political parties, environmental justice, judicial reform, religious practice. And along the way, I have had conversations that will stick with me for a long time.
One thing that is abundantly clear to me after this year is something that I knew but never fully internalized: Each person truly is a universe, no matter how cliche it is to say. We may walk in the same forrest, and even leave the same sized footprints, but we are never truly able to understand the experiences of each other, the universes’ that we occupy, or the spaces we live in. And I think that is ok and beautiful.
Right now, I am half a social worker. I have one year left and a lifetime to go. I feel excited, grateful, and privileged to be here.
— Liora
Liora Resnick 