Social Work Personal Statement

I began my social work studies over twenty-five years ago at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. I never questioned my decision to pursue a career in social work; I loved my classes and worked hard to learn as much as possible. But the information I gained in undergraduate school simply opened the doors of my education. Most of my learning has come through constant questioning, personal research, and especially through work and life experience. Through these experiences I have encountered the challenges faced by individuals, families, and society and have been able to further access and develop the innate personality traits and abilities that originally led me to study social work as well as learn and practice the many skills necessary to be a successful mental health counselor.

My main reason for applying to the Simmons School of Social Work is that it is an accredited university with an excellent reputation as an educational institution and offers an MSW program that is predominantly online. I attended Thomas Edison State University online and earned my bachelor’s degree with a GPA of 3.9. Once I made the decision to continue my education, I searched for MSW programs that were available online with CSWE accreditation in compliance with New Jersey State social work licensure. I found that Simmons’s specialized program in clinical social work is well suited for my educational needs.

Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi once stated, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”. This simple yet powerful quote motivates me to remain steadfast in the mission of aiding others. I’m pursing a Masters in social work because by working in this field, I can educate, advocate, motivate, understand, and encourage resilience to clients from every walk of life. It is a profession that will allow me to practice both on a micro and macro level simultaneously. Lastly, working in social work gives me the capacity to challenge policies affecting disadvantaged communities.

As a woman diagnosed with social anxiety,I was entrusted to be under the care of a social worker so as to help me manage my disorder. Personally, I have gone through so many experiences which collectively made me develop a deeper insight into the roles of social workers as compared to other health caregivers. Besides that, I have seen a lot of transformative supports to people who have various social problems provided through the selfless care of the social workers. Subsequently, this further fueled my ambition to study and support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable persons in the society. I firmly believe that my motivation towards helping

I decided to apply to the social work master because I have encountered a lot of different experiences, problems, and achievements over the past four years. Similarly, I have always had a deep desire for helping others in a caring and supportive way. I faced many obstacles through my adolescent years such as: having an eating disorder, self-harm, and depression. After going through therapy, I realized that I wanted to help young people to overcome problems and to be able to help them to move forward in life. I want to make them comprehend that change is possible as long as the person want it.

Social work is a career that finds and chooses you, rather than you selecting it. Social work has always been an immense portion of my life even when I had no recollection of what social work entailed. My life revolved around so many situations that had a social worker stepped in, my life would be totally different than it is today. Many individuals and agencies lack the compassion and empathy for oppressed people. Having been in many circumstances, has given me the experience and background that influenced me to go into social work, as well as the understanding of my role and responsibilities that I will assume as a professional social worker, and my reasons for selecting the program at ASU School of Social Work and thoughts on how the Mission Statement addresses my career goals.

I am a 19 year old college student who grew up in Aurora, Illinois. Right now I’m going to college at Northern Illinois University to pursue a degree in family and child studies. By achieving this degree, I hope to become a social worker, and eventually work with children in the foster system. Over the past 19 years many things have grown me into the person I am today. This last sentence is what I will examine through sociological imagination throughout this paper.

Ever since grade school, I've known that what I aspire to do with my life is help people and from there on I've jumped on and off from different possibilities as to what to become. Growing up I went through difficulties such as having to deal with an alcoholic father, throughout the years he eventually recovered. Meanwhile, my siblings and I dealt with constant arguments that no child should have to deal with. I thought about perhaps becoming a social worker and provide children who are going through a storm with a newfound strength and help them know what it means to be safe.

From a young age for as long as I can remember, I have been interested in working with people and interested in how their social factors affect behaviour. I am very focused on a career that involves working with people as I feel it would suit my personality. Studying Sociology at university I believe will expand my knowledge, enable me to learn about the social interactions between people in different cultures and I believe it is important to study this as a basis for becoming a social worker. I understand that this job will be one of the most difficult and challenging jobs I will face and I am under no illusion as to what the job involves. I realise the demands on being a social worker: working unsociable hours and dealing with pressurised situations: with individuals at their most vulnerable point in their lives.

A recruiter first introduced me to the AmeriCorps Network one year ago at the annual, University of Connecticut Careers for the Common Good fair. During his brief presentation, I became intrigued. As a result, I opted to further research this organization. I then realized that I wanted to become one of the 80,000 members per year to join because, as an endeavoring youth social worker, I believe that serving with this organization will be a phenomenal opportunity to learn how to appropriately work with children from all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The experience I will gain working towards strengthening local communities by addressing matters paramount to the populace, including enhancing the quality of life for local students while acquiring invaluable core competencies, obtaining money for my education and discovering a new appreciation for citizenship is worthwhile as I work towards achieving my ultimate career objective.

When I get my degree in Social Work I hope to be working with developmentally disabled children and adults. I hope to be working with developmentally disabled people because my mom works with them so I grew up around them, and my little sister is autistic. Growing up around developmentally disabled people as well as having an autistic sister has made me feel compassion towards them and want to help them in their everyday lives do things that they are not fully capable of doing on their own. In my chosen degree there are many ways that the four subfields of anthropological training could be helpful. One of the four subfields, Archaeology could be helpful to me in my degree in social work by helping me better understand why some developmentally

Witnessing social injustices, homelessness, child abuse, discrimination among those disabled has made me empathetic to others and has motivated me in wanting to create social change. While working at Borough of Manhattan Community College[BMCC] Admissions office, I have been able to see the many factors that make it difficult for many to make it through college among them lack of resources, social challenges. Lack of effective communication between students, teachers and school also contributes to the difficulties I see student face the majority of time. Students who have a disability are restricted, placed in awkward situations due to insufficient accessibility within schools. Ignorance, lack of awareness, discrimination within students, staff members makes it problematic for these students to seek help resulting in alienation. Having the opportunity to work with students daily, helping them transition from high school to college, advising them, becoming aware of daily issues have resulted in my desire to serve students and families.

I have always been interested in clinical social work in fact that is the reason why I got into the social work graduate program. Lately, I have been feeling unsure about becoming a clinical social worker. What I hope to gained from this class is to increase my knowledge about the field and discover if clinical social work is for me.

My interested in the field of social work started while I was working at a hospital as an Emergency Medical Scribe. At first, I wanted to become a nurse. However, after I affiliated with some of the nurses and watch how they take care of the patients with different injuries and sickness in the emergency room; I knew right away that this line of work was not my calling. One day, while I was working at the hospital, the doctor and I saw a patient who was in need of help other than medical related. The doctor asked the charge nurse, who was on duty that day, to call the Social Worker. The social worker came in to the room and talked to the patient about how she will help in finding a place to stay as the patient recovering and also governmental

The bulk of my experience working with refugees and displaced persons comes from my time working in the Kachin Statement of Myanmar. As described above, I did various education and community development work in a serious of refugee and internationally displaced camps (IDP) on the border of China and Myanmar. I have also done work with displaced persons in Morocco when I studied abroad in my internship at a local nonprofit that provided courses and basic life necessities for displaced persons. Finally, I have experience working with asylum seekers during my field placement at Bronx Legal Services and in my work as an advisory board member of my undergraduate university’s alternative break program, most notably spending a week in Immokalee, Florida aiding in connecting asylum seekers to community resources.