A little earlier today I went to my last class and submitted my final assignment for graduate school. I have one more day of internship left on Friday. Then, a week from Saturday I graduate with my Master's degree in social work (MSW).
This most recent semester was much less stressful than the Fall semester. This time I only had 3 classes and the workload seemed significantly lighter overall. It was quite a relief because I really thought I was losing my mind last November / December.
This year my internship has been at an urban Detroit hospital where they have a therapy program for children and adolescents who had either been witness to or been victimized by physical or sexual abuse or they had witnessed the death of a loved one. Along with conducting therapy sessions I was also responsible for interviewing families who had a child in the hospital for medical reasons. In these cases I had to determine what, if any, additional resources the family might need. I also had to ferret out possible child abuse and neglect.
Overall I filed about a half dozen cases with the local Child Protective Service agency. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm glad if I helped remove kids from dangerous situations in their home. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that these same kids won't face equal or worse abuse/neglect in foster care. There are very few good options for children in this situation.
This was a very different internship from the one I had last year. Last year I worked with adults who were violent offenders with schizophrenia. This year I worked with children and teens who were victims of violence in some way and with families dealing with difficult medical situations. Both were great internships, but this year's was more emotionally draining.
This year I saw dozens of families in moments of absolute crisis. In therapy I worked with kids who had witnessed terrible things at home, ranging from arguments and chair throwing between parents all the way to witnessing one parent murder the other and then commit suicide. On the inpatient units I worked with families who were living through nightmarish scenarios, such as a child's severe spinal injury or the diagnosis of a horrible disease.
This year I saw some people be unwaveringly strong and others demonstrate incredible stupidity. I talked with parents who showed admirable bravery in the face of Hell, and I called security on parents who couldn't control themselves and who started fighting in the hospital hallways. I worked with successful middle class, two parent families from the suburbs and I worked with impoverished, unemployed, homeless mothers with as many as ten children and no family or friends to help out. I saw the system work sometimes and I watched helplessly while children were taken away from their mother for no other reason than that they were poor.
All in all my classes were pretty good. Some of the classes were kind of a joke, and some were very difficult, but it was at the internships where I got my greatest education. It's been a good couple of years.
It may sound corny or schmaltzy, but one of the things I learned the most this year was sheer gratitude for Barb and the kids. My family is intact and not affected by divorce, violence, illness or poverty. After spending all that time at the hospital this year, things like divorce, violence, illness and poverty started to feel like the norm. It's easy to take our happy and pleasant life for granted.
Now I have to find a job. I have a couple of irons in the fire, as they say. I have my resume out to an outpatient adolescent medical clinic where they want to have a mental health therapist on staff and another resume out to an adolescent HIV/AIDS clinic. Barb's sister knows people at the local V.A. hospital and sent my resume to them yesterday for work with traumatized and/or addicted veterans.
So, that's it. The only thing left between me and my Master's is the graduation ceremony, which I wasn't even going to attend, but Barb is making me... and my mom is flying in for it as well. Even Simon is excited about it.
Until then, I just get to hang out, goof off, be lazy and play with the kids.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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5 comments:
Yay! Yay! Yay!! I am so proud of you and so thrilled that you are FINISHED!! Heck yeah, we are going to your graduation :)
I love you bunches!!!
:) Me
CONGRATS!!! Now it won't sound so weird when I call you "Master" ...
Well done, Hawksbill!! Being a mature student is a tough thing to pull off, and you did a great job. Congratulations!!
Your comments on the meaning of family rings very true, and is not corny or mushy at all.
I try to get NutLittle to understand how the world "in her head" is not the world that others necessarily have, and just how sad and scary some of those worlds can be. Just a Dad trying to protect his child from the horrors this world can hold, I guess, and not an easy thing to do.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how to expose our kids to the realities of life without scarring them or making them fearful.
Congratulations!
Your clients will be lucky to have you.
-Colleen
Thank you all! :)
Bignut, I think it's hard for any of us to know that the world "in our head" is not the same world for everyone... Especially if we aren't often confronted with those other worlds.
I'm not in too much of a hurry to expose the kids to those harsh realities, though. I'd like them to gain a strong foundation of feeling as if life is safe, predictable, welcoming and worth taking risks in. At some point, maybe when they are 12+ years old it might be nice to begin volunteering at a places like homeless shelters together so that we can see different, less comfortable ways that people live.
I'd like to be with them when they encounter things like poverty, though so that I can help them navigate an understanding of it. In my old corporate career I worked with a number of people who were very open about their belief that the poor brought their poverty on themselves due to laziness, immorality or other personal failings.
When my kids are old enough to see some of the harsher aspects of the world firsthand, I want to make sure we're there as parents to discuss with them the larger, social reasons behind poverty.
I'm tempted now to tell them some stories of things I see at the hospital, but I haven't found the words to do that yet. I tell them I work with kids who are very sad or very sick, but I don't go into the details. Maybe I should do that more, but I worry about scaring them more than is necessary yet.
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