I Am a Master

On Monday, May 21 while I was freezing half to death in the middle of Mongolia, I officially became a Master of Social Work (not sure if that’s the correct way to say it but I like the idea of calling myself a master).

I have wanted to be a social worker since I was 17. The summer before my senior year of high school, my friend got me a job working in the Child Care of a temporary home in Norwalk, CA. The temporary home was kind of like a homeless shelter for families. Families would live there on a temporary basis while they tried to get back on their feet. The residents were required to have life/job/finance counseling and were able to use the Child Care if the parents were at work or school. I think my mom saw how much I liked working there and she’s the one that suggested that maybe I should do this for a living, except that I should be running the temporary home and not just working in the Child Care.

I thought about majoring in Social Work at BYU and even took an Intro to Social Work class but decided against it. I didn’t want to have to take all the sociology classes and I loved my Intro to International Relations class more, so I opted for majoring in Political Science. But in my head I still wanted to be a social worker, just now in a more international setting.

After finishing my undergraduate studies I re-focused on social work. I decided that I needed to get a Master’s degree. The problem was that in order to get into an MSW program I needed more experience in the field, but in order to get a job as a social worker, most organizations required an MSW. So instead I stalled my life plans, moved to China and hoped that working as an ESL teacher would give me some relevant experience.

I found out that I got into Boston College’s Graduate School of Social Work while I was in China. I had instructed my mother to EMAIL me when the grad schools I had applied for started sending me letters because good or bad I wanted to be able to process the news before reacting to it. Well she ignored my instructions (which I’m grateful she did) and called me on my Chinese cell phone at 7am. I had to go outside of my apartment to talk because reception was bad inside. When she told me that I had gotten into Boston College, my top choice, I started to cry on the phone while standing outside in my pajamas with no shoes on. I was ecstatic and so relieved that I now had a plan and I was going to get to do exactly what I wanted. Boston College was my top choice because of their Global Practice program, which is one of the leading International Social Work programs in the US (if not the best, there aren’t any official rankings). I also really wanted to live in Boston. I was so excited and nervous that I kind of didn’t eat for a week after I got in (when I’m really nervous [as in miles past tests or papers nervous] I forget to eat).

The first time I set foot on campus was for Orientation. Meeting my classmates the first few days of meetings was awesome. Rarely had I ever been able to talk so easily with a group of people as a whole before. Everyone was so friendly and we were all there because we had a common goal. It was interesting to hear about everyone’s different backgrounds and what had led us to an MSW program. Through the 4 semesters that I was taking classes I formed some life-long friends. We suffered together through some weird and challenging professors, we laughed together about some of the seemingly ridiculous assignments we had to complete, and we enjoyed getting to know each other and becoming friends.

Some of the memories going through my head right now are: All of the free food during September because of all the orientations and meetings; feeling super uncomfortable about being white during Diversity class; feeling proud that I was the only one in my Macro class to have read the case study but feeling uncomfortable that I was answering all the questions (I’m not bragging here, I think I completed maybe 30% of my reading assignments while at BC and just happened to have liked that particular case.); Dr. Tran in Research Methods being annoyed at the guest speaker he had brought in and his hilarious phrases; reading Shackleton, then discussing eating dogs and penguins, then watching the movie and being disappointed that it didn’t include some of the best parts; being told by a professor not to fall asleep in class the second to last class of a semester when I KNOW that I had never actually fallen asleep in that class (or any class at BC); making group posters like we were in 4^th grade; being the only person in class that seemed to be watching and enjoying the movie about the mining union; being told not to settle for being second banana.

Thank you to all of my professors and advisers. Thank you to my friends and classmates. Thank you to Boston College for a great education (even though it was over priced).

Congratulations to the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work’s Class of 2012 and good luck!!!! 

(Sorry for the lack of pictures, I was not at graduation so don't have any personal photographic evidence that it did in fact take place. All those photos I've seen on facebook could have been staged for some elaborate hoax for all I know.)