My Ideal Career Path

I am also very friendly, and I am well aware of the diversity of different cultures. The skills that I challenge myself at every day is honesty. I cannot always be honest towards someone if it will bring them a bad day. I know I’ll have to be that person sometimes, and it will never get easier doing that.

The purpose of social work in the contemporary society is concern for the individual. The function of social work is to help solve problems in human relationships for a better quality of life and to protect them from harm and from harming others which will enhance well-being. I have decided to pursue social work as a profession because I am at the point in my life where I want a sense of fulfilment. I care about people, I want to help others. I want to make the world a better place to live. I want to be the change I want to see. I want to serve the people in society who are physical, mentally, and socially less privileged than I am and make them feel loved and accepted. I will work with all groups of people but I have a strong interest in working with children and people who suffer from mental illnesses and addiction. I am interested in social work because it is a career with lots of flexibility in an ever-changing field allowing me to work in different settings, with different goals and challenges, but with a shared purpose of serving the common good of people.

My alternate career path is nursing. I think this would be a good career for me because in nursing you have to work with people and you help them, and I like to help people anyway I can. I didn’t pick nursing as my major because to be a nurse you have to go to school for four years and I didn’t want to do that, so I decided to do a degree that is only two years.

The desire and passion and the strong interest I have for a profession in the care industry derives from my role as a care assistant, which I have enjoyed for the past nine years .The role has been challenging and extremely rewarding at the same time, I am genuinely a compassionate individual but my role has also taught me to be more patient and empathetic when assisting someone. Growing up I never thought that I would one day be so passionate about something in my life. I did not really think much about the future nor what I wanted to do with my life. From where I come from it is normal that after finishing school girls marry, have children and become housewives for the rest of their lives.

Starting my career as a social worker and working with children and families is where I feel as though I belong. I have the compassion, the drive and the withstanding endurance to make the area of child and family social work my passion. Working with children requires patience, dedication, resilience and so many other trusting characteristics. Relationships within children’s immediate families have a profound impact on their state of being. Becoming a child and family social worker is undeniably tough and arduous work but the reward of seeing families meet their set goals and becoming a stronger more united family unit come to fruition surpasses anything else. When I become a child and family social worker, my job days will be over and my career starts. Going to worker everyday knowing that I’m making a difference will be the best feeling. A great person once said, “It’s your mistakes that make you human, and it’s your humanity that makes you influential.”

Social work is a career that I have always been interested in, especially working with children and families. Helping people overcome obstacles and making the most of themselves is a very rewarding and yet a challenging career. I’ll have the chance to meet a variety of different people with different problems from cases of abuse and neglect as well as supporting those in the care system. I am particularly interested in working with children and families who often form the most vulnerable service users, developing a professional and trusting relationship with them, hopefully enabling them to participate fully in society.

Reflecting on my skills, I believe I have excellent social, communication and language skills. These skills are essential in any customer-facing or team work oriented job. As explained by Morgeson, F. P. et al. in “Selecting individuals in team settings: The importance of social skills, personality characteristics, and teamwork knowledge.” (2005):

I have always known that it is my passion to help people. This is why upon graduating I attended Mohawk College to pursue a career as an Educational Assistant. After receiving my diploma I began my career helping children with special needs. On a daily basis I have interactions with social workers and children who are involved with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society. I have had many eye opening experiences during my time spent with them. I have worked alongside our school’s Social Worker and have gained insight into mental health. Being an E.A. is rewarding, but I have come to the realization that I aspire to do more for children in need; I wish to become a social worker.

What interested you in this career? I wanted to work with families to improve and better their situations. Child Abuse is a horrible thing with endless survivors. By working in with Child Protective Services, I hoped to have a positive impact to prevent children from being abused.

The professional I selected to interview was Victoria Sanders. I chose to interview this professional because I admire the work she does. I am still not sure what I want to do with my MFC when I obtain it, but for now I would like to work with children victims of abuse and families. I want to help children with their trauma and help them grow in a positive manner. Children are the future generation therefore they need all the support and understanding they can get. I gain a sense of happiness and fulfillment when I work with children. I have previous experience working with children and I enjoyed every opportunity. Children are fun, happy and love to play. I wouldn’t mind having a career where all I do is play. In the beginning I want to focus on that population and then explore out. One of my overall goals is to own my own practice and give back to the community.

For my Career Exploration Project, I chose the career of legal secretary. In the practice of law, a legal secretary is person who works in the legal profession, typically assisting lawyers. I chose legal secretary, because I have been exposed and aware of this profession for a while. My mother has been involved in the legal secretarial field of work for about two and a half years now. Seeing lawyers and their assistants on television first interested me in the career, but my mother being a legal secretary furthered my interest. My mother took me to her place of business a few times. I wasn’t able to see lawyers in full action, but I got to see my mom and some other legal secretaries in meetings and conferences.

My short-term career goals are to complete nursing school, pass the National Council Licensure Examination-Registered Nurse (NCLEX), and become a registered nurse. I start at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing this fall; I am expected to graduate in the spring of 2018. I am interested in becoming a pediatric nurse at first. My long-term career goals would be to specialize in either pediatrics or neonatal nursing.

I have had some experiences with helping others when my mom was diagnosed with an infection that infiltrated her eye and she wasn't able to do anything because it was spreading to different parts of her body and I was the main one to take care of her when she was on medicine that would leave her weak and not being able to do anything at all. This personal experience of having to take care of my mother made it very certain that my decision is clear that this is what I would like to get into, becoming a social worker. Some people do not have the ability to distinguish being a nurture vs. nature and I can because I have been a nurture at a very young age, I have great organizational skills which have taught me to make my time more manageable and effectively while taking care of my mother while taking classes to further my education. Taking course from this university and qualifying as a social worker, I would believe that I can and will achieve and be a supportive member of this society. When I was growing up I had an aunt and a uncle worked with child and family services, I would see them become foster parents to young men who they left an impression on their life and those young men are grown now and being a perfect example of why I would want to study in this field as a social worker, This is certainly an area I would like to gain more knowledge

Since my time in my current career field I have seen many broken processes, some that are more severe than others. When processes are broken people can get hurt or even killed. This is why the most important concept for me in module 5 is Management by Example Active. This is the most important concept to me because of the severity of my career field. Within my job we handle and load live munitions on Aircraft’s on a daily basis. Not only do we perform this task while deployed but we do it at home around the civilians we want to protect. This task requires constant active supervision and technicians that will follow instructions precisely. Per our required reading in Chapter 7, page 204 “MBE-A exists in structured system with detailed

Early in my educational career I realized that I want to help people, not necessarily as a medical doctor or nurse but in a field that is unfortunately still undermined— psychology. As an adolescent, I struggled with my own mental illness. I felt completely isolated for years until I finally sought out help and began taking steps to become a better version of myself. My aspirations are to help individuals reach their full potential despite debilitating mental illnesses and help provide suicide prevention within my community. I graduated from high school with my AA degree from Eastern Florida State College and now I am working towards my B.S in psychology with a minor in cognitive sciences. There are two routes I see myself doing afterwards,