Blog post 3

This week in one of my other classes I watched a ted talk called "how to make stress your friend". The woman presenting described a study that had just been published that proved that if you believe that stress is bad for you, then you are greatly affected by the downsides of stress. However, if you believe that your stress responses (sweating, racing heart, etc.) are a good thing, then you are largely unaffected by its negative affects. This is so interesting to me - I have always been so interested by the way just thinking of something can give you a very real physical reaction, and this just reaffirmed my interests in cognitive behavioral therapy.

This week I have also gotten in to the meat of one of my psychology elective classes - it is really very interesting to me how differently the psych department approaches treatment, patient care, and diagnosis than social work does. I also am realizing more and more how much I prefer the systems approach that social work so often takes when working with clients one on one. While I feel like I'm learning a lot about specific disorders and the DSM, I was disappointed in a few things in the psych department. I was most disappointed in the opinions that my psychology major classmates had of social workers. There were a few jokes made about how social workers want to "just make everything better", how we strive for unrealistic "rainbows and butterflies" type goals for out clients, and generally that social work counseling is less effective than a psychological approach. This class discussion made me appreciate more than ever the accepting nature of my classmates in the social work department, though I know that even the most enlightened person will bring their own hang ups and prejudices to the table.

Blog post 2

This week we read and discussed the structure of organizations and decision making within those organizations. While reading these chapters, I was thinking a lot about how our volunteer and internship placements, especially int he beginning of our careers, influence our perspectives as social workers for the rest of our professional lives. Regardless of what we learn in textbooks, these placements will be the foundation for how we understand the not only the role of nonprofits and organizations within our community, but also the structure of the organizations themselves. How we are treated, rewarded, reprimanded, and viewed in our internships (and our perceptions of these experiences for full-time staff) will be the guide for our work in similar organizations in the future.

I recently started babysitting for a small family in south austin. Mom Brie runs the south austin tennis center and dad Paul works in the psych department at the travis county jail. He offered to let me come shadow him a couple of shifts a month when he does self-harm risk assessment on new inmates. I'M SO EXCITED! Not only will this be a new population for me, but it will be a really rough population - Paul has told me that about 60% of the time, the inmates he sees are drunk or angry and just saying what they think will get them out of jail. However, the other 40% are true psych cases, and rough ones at that. I really think shadowing Paul will be an eye-opening experience for me - I think it will toughen me up a little, it will look great on my resume, and it will inform my practice in different ways than safe, loving, warm safeplace can.

Blog Post 1

This week in class we discussed the social work code of ethics and how as social workers we have to navigate our obligations as social workers around the confines of federal and state employment laws. When we came to the topic of employing someone who might make choices that go against your agency's mission, I was unpleasantly surprised to hear that there has been incidences of domestic violence among the employees at SafePlace. I know that several of the women I currently work with have experienced domestic violence in the past, but I hated to hear that there have been batterers working at SafePlace as well. We discussed that statistics are statistics, that no matter what building or organization you're involved with, you're still faced with the same problems with the same frequency everywhere you go.

That conversation made me simultaneously grateful and resentful of federal employment laws. While it would be disconcerting to employ a violent person in a nonviolent organization and not be able to do anything about it, I can see that these laws are there to protect people, and I am grateful for that. Everyone makes mistakes, and I am glad there are laws to protect the everyday person who commits a lesser crime from losing their job.

In class we also watched Dan Pallotta's ted talk, which really got me thinking. I've seen the video a few times before, but each time I see it I feel like something different strikes a chord with me. This time what really hit me was his description of pay rates within the nonprofit sector. I have thought for a long time that what I really want to do with my social work degree is private practice counseling, but it got me thinking about how much of that decision is subconsciously based on the difference in pay I know I'll receive. I haven't faced any opposition with this decision - no one has said to me, "you should stay in an organization with a low hourly rate because thats where we need the most help" - everyone seems to just accept my decision to work in counseling without a problem. There is, however, a different feeling that goes with working in a nonprofit versus telling someone you're going to be a counselor - when I tell the average person that I work in a domestic violence shelter on the hotline, there's always a few responses I get that make me feel a little bit like a martyr or somehow holy, like I'm somehow above the average UT business graduate who is only out to serve themselves. People will say, "Oh bless your heart, we need more people like you", or "wow, there's no way I could do that, thank you so much" (being thanked right off the bat is a strange one but it happens all the time). I guess that's just the aftertaste of puritanism that Pallotta was describing.