My field instructor told me during her last site visit that I need to start thinking about my final project for my internship and submit the proposal to her and my site supervisor by the beginning of fall semester. This project should be entirely my own creation, must be sustainable (that is, it must continue after I leave the agency), and I have to include a description of it in my final educational portfolio, which is sort of analogous to a master’s thesis except not nearly as involved, time-consuming or academically rigorous. The thing is, I’m utterly stumped as to what I’d like to do. My team has offered no helpful suggestions other than updating these “fact sheets” to hand out to people who need quick answers on a variety of case management issues, such as “How to Ride the Bus” and “Applying for Food Stamps 101″. Perhaps that would be useful, but it does not scream ”educational portfolio material” to me.
Keep Reading
As a baby social worker at the age of barely-20, I took a job at the domestic violence shelter and program in the city where I went to college. When I told my mom about it, I recall a distinct crinkling of her nose. My mother is, to put it lightly, rather skeptical of feminism or anything that can be remotely portrayed as such (agitating for women’s rights apparently falls into this category), even though she does, says, and believes in many things that could fall under the label–another post altogether. Besides the fact that she was wary of my decision on eerily women’s lib-sounding grounds, she was somewhat dismissive of the field of social work in general. She relayed to me the following example of why social workers are not to be trusted (names have been omitted due to my poor memory):
“So-and-so had her kid taken away for spanking him in the grocery store when he was pitching a fit. Somebody called a hotline and the next day a social worker came to her house and took him away just like that.”
My mother is gifted with powers of exaggeration, but her implication here is very much in line with the (generalized) perception of social workers, specifically that of the working class: these bleeding hearts can swoop in any minute and take your kids away just for disciplining them!
Keep Reading
It has recently come to my attention that “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” (hereafter referred to as BTVS) is the most brilliant television show ever created. As is often the case with awesome things (slap bracelets, text messaging, Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” video), my realization of this fact is somewhat belated; however, it hasn’t stopped me from nonstop enthusing about the show for the past few months as I have watched and re-watched every episode in lieu of schoolwork. “Have you ever seen ‘Buffy’?” etc. For a show that was quite popular back in the day–it ran from 1997-2003–a surprising amount of people my age, who would have been in high school during the heyday of BTVS, are apparently too sophisticated to admit that they ever watched the shows on WB. Do not become one of them. Immediately rent/Netflix/pirate/borrow the entire series and watch them. Then look me in the eye and tell me, TELL ME, that you didn’t tear up just a little during the episode “Passions” in Season 2 when Buffy has to punch Giles in the face and screams, “You can’t leave me! You’re all I have left!” My god, that is compelling television.
Keep Reading
