Going to college for social work

[trenton]

I have been working with a career coach, a life coach, and an employment agency on this issue. Here is what I came up with.

I know what my top picks are in terms of career choices, but for the most part they are unavailable. for example, I could be a full time chess teacher, but these jobs are rare. I would have to move to New York, and it would make it difficult to pay for housing. Secondly, I would be interested in joining a think tank, but this requires both a bachelors degree and that I move to Washington D.C. It doesn't make sense for me to get away from my family before finishing my education.

The area of social work I am most interested in is research at a macro level. I would like to use my research to inform policy decisions. This is similar to what I would be doing at think tanks. I would like a job that requires me to constantly learn because I seem to crave intellectual stimulation. The employment agency said that they would help pay for my tuition. I would require at least a master's degree and possibly a doctorate.

If I go down this path, then I would like to finish my book about mental illness and society. My dream is to reform the educational system to include emotional mastery and thus prevent suicide, but I don't know how to go about this goal. The best I could find was volunteering for NAMI so I could go into schools and discuss my history with mental health challenges.

There are all kinds of things I enjoy studying, but I don't like the career prospects. I like philosophy, sociology, and psychology, but social work seems to have the better career prospects.

[Bobby_2021]

Hey man do you like coding? I recently discovered the rust programming language and I love it. Something tells me that you might like it. Because it's pretty intellectually stimulating, atleast for me. 

It won't be easy but it's possible to get jobs with some effort. 

Have you joined college already? 

[trenton]

@Bobby_2021 I plan on joining college soon. I took a course in computer science and I don't plan on making it my career.

[EdgeGod900]

@Bobby_2021 Bro chill with Rust already ahaha wtf. The guy clearly leans towards exercising his social intelligence and big picture thinking(macro). These are literally the complete opposite of computer science, which are autistically very small picture.

 

No hate bro, but It genuinely made me laugh with how you managed to bring up something so completely oopposite of social work.

[Bobby_2021]

@EdgeGod900 haha got it. What you think about work and what you might end up actually doing may be a lot different. So be sure that social work is indeed in alignment with your values. So obviously you have to go do it for a year or two to make sure it is in alignment with your values or not.

These think tanks usually are propaganda machines of their donors. Does it always have to be the case? Nope. But it is the case a lot of times. They may not be interested in orchestrating systemic changes to societies. They are also in the business of survival and that corrupts their work as well.

At the end of the day, your plan in the micro domain also matters in the long run.

I am not pushing anything but I just wanted to make the options out there for him. Sorry if I came across otherwise. 

[Michael569]

Love that life purpose statement. I wish you all the success on that journey 🤞🏼

[UnbornTao]

💪

[trenton]

More about emotional mastery in schools.

Apparently, social workers have developed these kinds of programs and they have started Integrating them. It is called SEL or social emotional learning. It helps children to develop emotional resilience while learning how to manage relationships. This is important for children who suffer from abusive and dysfunctional families because they don't know who else to turn to and are often unaware of the resources available.

There are a few problems though. Schools are poorly funded, making it difficult to integrate these programs as much as they need to be integrated. This makes it difficult to fully staff these programs because resources are stretched thin across many different schools. In order for these programs to be successful, schools need to have a bigger budget than they currently have.