Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research

For those of you in colder or simply different climes, toward the end of last week we had 3 days in a row, here in Philly, that were above 70 degrees. The effect this had on our local vegetation is that all the first flowering shrubs and trees–magnolia, forsythia, jonquils and tulips, hyacinth–literally “exploded” into floating clouds and weeping tendrils of pinks, whites, and yellows, deep purples, fresh reds that we have not seen since last summer.

The warm fragrant breezes pulled dog-walkers, brisk and leisurely walkers, instant joggers, bikers, skater-boarders and small children on scooters out onto roads and sidewalks where the cafe tables that had been inside all winter were suddenly back outside and full of afternoon coffee drinkers in Bryn Mawr and after-dark diners up and down Main Street in Manyunk.

Around school, besides the work that has been bursing forth all around us as the semester progresses, a wealth of interesting and valuable activies has appeared: professional talks on subject relevant to our professional training, movies, readings brought to campus by Bryn Mawr’s writer’s program, a lunchtime chat with one of our own professors, Gestalt trainings on Saturdays.

This is also the time of year when those in their final year are searching for jobs, getting ready to graduate and leave the program, mid-program students are finalizing arrangements for next year’s second Field Placement,  and first-year part-timers are finding their first Field Placement.

Meanwhile, others are just receiving notice of their acceptance to the program and beginning to make living and working arrangements to accomodate this new focus for their lives.

And some are just deciding to apply!

Although I’m not exactly certain why spring is always so exciting to me and so many others I know–beyond the obvious relief she brings from the dark, cold winter–perhaps it is partly that we need new beginnings in our lives to move us along in our constant spiral of ’becoming’.

And also, undoubtedly, because it’s time once again to pull that favorite pair of flip flops out from the back of the closet, unpack those T-shirts and await the full onslaught of Philly-style summer in the city!

Back to reading, research, and paper-writing,

your own student blogger,

Amy

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Filed under: Field Placements, Extra-curriculars, At Bryn Mawr GSSWSR

Tuning in today from a favorite cafe in Chestnut Hill, courtesy of our recent Spring Break.

Classes are back in session after last week’s ‘break’. Most students use ‘Break Week’ to catch up on reading and writing, their families, partners, kids — and a few even find time to travel, even to some place warm.

I remember last year’s Spring Break. Myself and everyone I knew were deep in paper-writing.

However, with much of the ‘academics’ behind me at this point, this year I decided to put in extra time at my field placement, read my own choices in print and on-line, do some blogging, and make arrangements for my field placement for next year. I also spent some extra time following my growing obsession with politics: catching up on the blogs and even attending an appearance of my chosen candidate! (It IS March in Philadelphia during the Primaries, after all, the one in PA being April 22nd.)

Towards the end of the week, I also experienced a local crisis – heat and hot water ceased to work in my apartment building in ’slightly east Mt. Airy’ — leaving the 50+ people in our building without our ‘basic needs’ for over a week.

They just got the boiler fixed today (Day 9) and what is interesting to me, now, about this event — and why I mention it here  – is that, as social workers in training, we continue to notice that nothing is simply ‘personal’ to us anymore. There seems to be this constant inner and outer dialogue about the ‘Social Work perspective.’

The real estate company that owns our building seemed to take its time getting our heat fixed and people here suffered unnecessarily because of this.

In response to the crisis, some of us ‘abandoned ship’ immediately. Some couples with children stayed and had to keep their little ones bundled up constantly. People with health issues and some of my elderly neighbors with mobility problems suffered even more. The most vulnerable members of our building suffered the most, AND had no where else to go.

It was as if my fellow tenants represented a microcosm of  society, except that people watched out for each other more, I think, as neighbors often do. The incident served to make some of us more aware and we are organizing to claim our tenant rights, specifically regarding finances.

Perhaps already possessing such tendencies, in this program we become more and more aware of injustice, power and powerlessness, agency, and suffering in its many guises. We become aware of how things can be different, better, more inclusive, more supportive, more considerate — of what needs to change.

We scan alternative news sources to monitor what is going on in society. We discuss what our children are learning in school and what we would like them to learn. We organize with fellow tenants, attend town meetings, and study political candidates in-depth before deciding for whom we will vote. As clinicians, we take into account the person-in-environment instead of pathologizing, as managers we do not dictate but instead share authority, as policy-makers we consider the greater good.

Back in classes this week, it was great to see everyone and be back at our studies.

Next week is our first Student Art Show. I’ll tell you all about it so stay tuned.

Best,

Amy

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Filed under: Classes, At Bryn Mawr GSSWSR

Last Friday, my regular Field Placement day, it snowed here in Philly.  Having lived my entire adult life (so far) in Massachusetts until I moved here to attend Bryn Mawr, I am still not accustomed to how–what I consider to be a ‘minor snow’, for example, six inches or less–can effectively disable an entire metropolitan area.

Thus, I was up at 5:30, out the door by 7 and after a harrowing drive on unplowed roads, arrived at the Community Mental Health Center a bit late.

However, it was closed. (I later found out that my supervisor should have called me but she was ill that day.)

On the still-mostly-unplowed drive back home, I had more time to consider what I had just done–and why. Frankly, as my wheels were half-spinning up a steep slope in Chestnut Hill as our entire line of cars was perilously close to becoming stuck ‘en masse’, I wondered why this apparent attack of ‘poor judgement’ was happening to me.

Back in Boston, I may even have taken the day off (despite their excellence in the art of plowing) from a job where I was actually getting paid. Yet, here I was, at an internship risking life and limb to participate free-for-them in learning to lead group therapy for clients in a Community Mental Health Intensive Outpatient Unit.

Well, I think the deciding factor here is that I love my placement–the careful mentoring, getting to know and help clients, learning the subtle skills of leading groups. I’m here and not there, in a major Boston Hospital Informations Systems department, anymore for a reason. At twice my old income, I would still chose to be here, now, doing this program.

Earning this MSS here at Bryn Mawr is an investment in my future greater happiness, personal growth and professional satisfaction and all of these elements are already changing for me.

However, next snow day, I may stay home.

Enjoy,

Amy

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Filed under: Field Placements, At Bryn Mawr GSSWSR

There is great benefit, I think, in our being together in ‘real time’ in a classroom each week. So much so, that I question the possibility of truly being prepared for the profession of social work through an on-line social work program–which seems, to me, to take the ’social’ out of social work.

In any case, I very much look forward to class each week and I know I am not alone in that feeling. It’s great to see and discuss and disagree and bond each week within our various classroom groups!

I will always have particularly fond memories of my first year, first semester HBSE II class, aka. Social Theory. I remember wondering, beforehand, how a 3-hour social work graduate class would go. Would it be boring? Lecture only? Would the ideas, reading and thinking that I had done in my life up to this point be revealed as ‘greatly in need of expansion and an overhaul’? I was curious, excited and nervous on that first day.

In class, we’re usually in a circle (or something with corners or shaped somewhat like an amoeba) and it was so that first day. I remember happily noting the diversity of the class members and not being able to tell who our professor would be, until she welcomed us all and began to speak. I was hoping for a variety of life and work experience among my classmates and truly this significantly enhances all of our learning.

That class has a great reading list and our first assignment was to read a phenomenally visionary novel from the last ninteenth century notable not for its literary artistry but, clearly, for its thorough examination of social problems and their possible solutions. What a great platform for addressing everything that was on our minds coming into this Master’s level Social Work program: policy issues, social justice, human nature, politics, poverty, class, social welfare, capitalism, altruism, addiction, the nature of helping, spirituality, marginalized populations–you name it. We had a solid two-hour discussion every week that spilled over onto the on-line blackboard between classes.

Here’s just a sample:

“What do you think about Bellamy’s presentation of the world of work in the novel? Does it seem possible to you? Why or why not?”

“I don’t buy it. It just seems to ideal that everyone would work if they didn’t have to. I mean, if everyone had the food, shelter and clothing that they needed, I think some people would just stay home and lie on the couch watching TV.”

“I disagree. When I had my first son, after staying home for a period of time with him, I really wanted to get back to working. I think it’s a human need to work, to feel useful, to feel connected. “

“Yes, just to continue with that, I think we really don’t know how people would react to not needing to work out of fear of homelessness and starvation anymore. It would be a totally different world.”

 Easy to jump in on this conversation, isn’t it?

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Filed under: Classes

Greetings and welcome to the Bryn Mawr School of Social Work and Social Research student blog!

I am currently in my second year of three and technically, a part-time student on the clinical social work track. I am finding that learning to be a social worker is a full time process, however, whether you take your studies at a full or part-time pace. So much has happened since beginning school last Fall that even now, at the halfway point, there is much to reflect on and much to tell you, through my own experience and those of my student colleagues.  Just last Wednesday there was a Happy Hour held at school after class (7:30 pm) down in the student lounge. Many who were currently in the building—students, faculty, and a Dean who had been working late in her office—were stopping by to say “Hi.” A group of us were hanging out, talking about our process of becoming social workers and remarking on how much we felt that we had progressed since last Fall.

As we sat there talking, I suddenly remembered how my friend, Marla, looked on the first day of class last year. I think we all had that ‘first year look’ at the beginning—a slightly glazed, ‘I wonder if I should really be here look’—the look of the untried beginning social work student.  

What I remember even more clearly, though, is that perhaps only a month later, she began to realize that she not only could do the work, but also do it well. She seemed to develop an almost impish glow of confidence as she participated often and enthusiastically in class! I have seen some version of this happen for everyone, including myself. It’s almost alchemical! 

Please come back soon to read more about our Student Social Work Adventures—the challenges and victories of being social work students, of becoming social workers, here at Bryn Mawr. 

Yours,

Amy

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Filed under: At Bryn Mawr GSSWSR