Hi All,
I am trying to write my personal statement to apply for my MSW, and I really need help. The prompt is
1. Motivation for social service, social work education, and a career in the profession. Explain why you want to pursue professional social work education, your reasons for applying to this college, and your social service interests and career goals.
2. Capacities for professional social work education. Comment on the nature and circumstance of any strengths and/or problems, including emotional or social, that might serve to enhance or limit your study.
3. Major social concern. Briefly describe what you consider to be a major social issue and why you consider it an important issue.
This is what I have so far. I would really appreciate some honest comments.
I had my first exposure to the practice of social work while taking a praxis course called "Modern Social Concience of Spain" during my semester abroad in Madrid. My praxis was in a government-run day care for low-income families, where the staff social worker, Isabel, worked with the families to improve communication and parenting styles. She was kind, a great listener, and somehow, in her presence, no problem seemed to great to solve. She was a role model whose example I wished to follow. I was very happy when she allowed me to shadow her during her sessions with the families. She would work with the family as a whole, helping parents understand how to improve their communication and parenting styles, as well as the community resources that were available to them and their children.
Having enjoyed working with Isabel a great deal, I decided to obtain more experience in social services upon returning to the United States. My senior year, I worked as an undergraduate intern in Family Life Education and Counseling Services (FLECS) center in Norristown, PA, a partial hospitalization program for children with mental disabilities. I was allowed to provide group therapy under closed supervision of a licenced clinical social worker to a group of girls ages 10-12. Without much difficulty, I bonded with the kids through simple conversation about their and my daily lives and fun recreational activities such as arts and crafts.
Most of these girls came from unstable and abusive family environments similar to my own. At age ten, when my parents and siblings immigrated to the United States from Russia, we were cut off from extended family. My parents were well-meaning people who wanted the best for us kids. Yet perhaps due to economical stresses to make ends meet while establishing their careers in United States and lack of emotional support system from family and friends, they became frustrated. My mother in particular did not handle stress well, and often physically and emotionally abused me, while my step-father told me to simply "wait out" her violent outbursts.
As the oldest sibling, I believed that it was my duty to absorb my parents' wrath and hence prevent it from being directed at my two much younger sisters. Moreover, I believed that it was my parents' right to act as they pleased in their own household, and that it was my obligation as a good daughter to keep my emotions to myself and not create additional family stress. While my parents worked and studied, I became the designated care-taker of my sisters, an experience that was perhaps key to developing my passion to protect and take care for children.
Although the emotional closeness that formed between my sisters and me is one that I treasure, I can not help but wish that I had a sympathetic adult to provide emotional support for me during the rough first years in the United States. Working with the girls in FLECS, I saw the longing that I harbored as a child for a non-judgemental adult to open up to, and I was proud to be one of such figures for them. The experience working with them is still one of the most rewarding I ever had. It may, thus, seem strange that I did not immediately pursue social work after graduating from college. Despite my love for the field, I was not sure it was the career choice for me.
I pursued another passion to a greater degree throughout college; neuroscience. Until recently, I saw my career heading in the direction of a doctorate in neuroscience and subsequent research work, and social services was more of a hobby. Hence, after graduating from college, I have been working as a research assistant at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, taking part in research of psychiatric medication using mouse models. While I am proud to be part of work to produce medication that could alleviate effects of psychiatric disorders and help our understanding of brain functions, I can not help but long for work that involves more direct approach to helping clients.
Recently, I began volunteering at the Vanderbilt Children's hospital after work and on weekends. There, I am able to once again interact with children in trouble and to feel warm and fuzzy inside as they smile at me as I play with them or read them a story. During my volunteer sessions, I also have the opportunity to interact with different professionals, such as nurses and hospital social workers. I am again amazed by the effect that a kind word of reassurance has on children and families going through what is one of the worst experiences of their lives. It is this experience that convinces me that I want to devote my life to helping children and families cope with mental and physical illness. I want to do so by obtaining a Master's of Social Work and ultimately become a licenced clinical social worker.
One of the issues I observed during my work with the girls in FLECS was that although many of them thrived in the safe setting of the group, their symptoms, reported by parents and teachers, worsened during periods away from therapy. That was due to the fact that behavior modification techniques that were taught to them by the FLECS staff were rather difficult to carry out in within their abusive home environment and during school. Watching the hospital social workers in the emergency room and thinking back to Isabel, I am impressed at their ability to think of the individual as part of his environment.
The role of a social worker is to empower an individual to succeed within the circumstances around her, an approach to social service that I believe is most efficient. While my current goal is to become a clinician, I believe that with the comprehensive social work education, I will be better prepared to help individuals within their environment better than with other counseling degrees. I believe that the best method of counseling individuals is to work with their general situation rather than using isolated psychotherapy techniques to alleviate their symptoms but not their circumstance. I saw this clearly both in Madrid and in FLECS with children's parents. These individuals would be incarcerated or hospitalized, appear to be doing better upon release, but relapse quickly after returning home as the factors that originally lead to institutionalization were still present. Clients would be better served by counseling that was aimed at developing skills that would be functional in their home environments.
I cannot help but wonder how much better my own childhood would have been if my parents had a supportive figure like Isabel or the social workers in FLECS to help them obtain resources to alleviate their struggles and ultimately improve their parenting skills. My childhood experience as an immigrant and caretaker of my sisters has taught me to understand and relate to children who are raised in difficult circumstance. Through my volunteer experience in Madrid, FLECS, and in the emergency room has equipped me with skills I need to successfully work with children and families in crisis. Now, I am ready to devote the next few years to earning my MSW and becoming a licensed social worker and bring about social change one family at a time.
