Take my hand and we'll make it I swear
ooooh oh! Living on a prayer
Last post I shared that I am halfway through this MSW program. Halfway! It's been a long haul! And while I would like to take credit for using Bon Jovi's lyrics to mark this momentous milestone, I have to give credit to Shoe's brother, the Artist, and his sister in law, the Gardener, for the spontaneous, simultaneous serenade they belted out for me last time I was up visiting them in West Seattle.
Love them, too, in case you're wondering.
Not that the last year and a half have been easy, but now the real work begins. Now I have to choose which internships I want to apply for next year and that process is far more intense than I thought it was. See ... we do our homework about all of the internships available and we submit our top three choices (in rank order) to the Placement Team. Then, Placement Team sits down with our Generalist Professors (our How To Be a Social Worker Class professors) in committee and they discuss each of us (all 150 of us) in detail.
THEN we're given the green light to contact a field placement. Hopefully it's one of the ones off our list. And for some of them, depending on where we've chosen, it's just the green light to formally apply. (It's been suggested to me by my Advisor that, if I choose to apply for one of the competitive internships, I'd be a very, very strong candidate. So I'm not worried. Only. I'm completely worried.)
Now, I'm not suggesting it's anything like Medical Residency, but the inside of my head feels like it's being pummeled from the inside out. I've been extremely, singly focused on my goal of providing counseling to children from low income families. Now I have these options in front of me and I have no idea which one I need to put in the Number One Spot. Which one will give me the best clinical experience. Which one will give me the most exposure to counseling with kids. Which one has the best chance of employment after grad school. If the placement working with kids who exhibit sexually deviant behaviors is too sexually focused to do me much good after I graduate. If the placement that involves visiting schools to counsel kids is too school-based. It goes on and on and on.
(Which explains why I've been doing quiet, meditative yoga lately -- too many thoughts marching through my head. It's getting awfully noisy in there.)
Decisions, decisions.
At the very least, for right now, I'll just focus on that Biopsychosocial I still haven't finished and I'll focus on the fact that I can say, "I graduate next year."
Because I do!
Posts
Do you not realize, Lisa, that whomever you decide to champion will be the recipient of your years of commitment and your desires to provide these children a safer, happier and more loving environment? Always so proud of you!