Something is Right With You

"I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." -Anne Frank I had a client come into my office the other day. An elderly gentleman who reported that that he has been feeling very lost since the death of he wife and constant companion of 64 years. As he described to me the tragic circumstances surrounding his wife’s passing, my heart ached for him. Before I started working in bereavement, I was under the mistaken impression that it is not such a big deal when the elderly die because they are nearing the end anyway and “have lived a good long life” (as the platitudes offered by well-meaning well-wishers often go). Tell that to the person who has spent the last 64 years with someone by his side. As a young person,...

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Posted in: direct practice,grief and loss,hospice

Moving up in the world

January was an eventful month for me. I found myself averaging about two job interviews a week. I have been ready to leave my rural community and have been willing to take just about any social work job in order to be able to move to a larger city. The interview with the company that would most closely fit my description of a "dream job" interview went particularly poorly, so I was shocked to receive an offer from them a week or two later.  28 days ago, they contacted me with an offer that was better than I had even begun to hope for. After some consideration, I decided to take it, and have spent the last 28 days preparing to say goodbye to my patients. I said my final patient and colleagues goodbyes today and yesterday, will move tomorrow,...

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Posted in: hospice,Job searching

Religion and spirituality

So one of the volunteers I work with mentioned the other day that I am “just not religious enough to be a good social worker.”  Terrific. I have two problems with this statement: A) Since when is religiosity (or even spirituality) a prerequisite for success as a social worker? And B) Since when am I not religious? We are planning a memorial service for hospice families that have lost loved ones in the last year.  It is taking place in a local church. We were discussing the order of programs and it was mentioned that we need an opening and closing prayer. I offered to say the closing prayer. One of the volunteers looked at me and said, “Um, we are looking for someone to pray who has more, um, traditional beliefs. You know, beliefs...

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Posted in: direct practice,hospice,religion,uncategorized

Let the Job Search Begin

Today marks exactly 90 days until I graduate with my MSW.  Not that I am counting or anything. I was planning on waiting until I was a month or so away from graduation to start applying for full-time jobs. I was recently reading some articles that reminded me what a bad economy we live in and that it generally takes people several months longer than they think it will to actually find a job (and that’s assuming people find jobs at all). So I decided I’d start sending out my resume now.  This has a potential to pose logistical challenges only if I get offered a full-time job very quickly and they want me to start right away and are unable to wait for me to finish classes and field (I graduate in December). But judging from how...

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Posted in: graduate school,Job searching,macro social work

Elders and racism

I got a scholarship for working with the elderly. It’s funny, because I went into social work because I wanted to work with children and issues of poverty, but I continue to find myself drawn to the aging people.When I moved to the rural south, I learned how prevalent issues of race and racism still remain in our country. Coming from the west, where people's skin color is relatively non-diverse, and the absence of racial minorities creates a pretense of the an absence of racism, this discovery was rather surprising to me. I visited a patient the other day, and she spent an hour telling me that she is “not racist, but I just think white people should stay with white people and black people should stay with black people. I’m not racist, but that ‘s just the way it is.” I encounter this type...

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Posted in: Elderly,hospice

Performance Evaluation

Just when I start to think that I am doing well in life, I get some sort of reminder about all of my vast areas for improvement. This time it came in the form of a performance evaluation at work. Not that it was anything really bad (I do enjoy my job, for the most part); it was just a reminder of how far I have to go. More of the same old… I need to organize my stuff better, document better, etc. Blah. I just want to be the world’s most perfect social worker now, dang it! Honestly, I don’t know about this whole “being an adult” thing. It’s hard sometimes. I think I chose a tough field to get involved with given the fact that it has such a high burnout rate. If I can just survive this year, which is extra tough because I am studying social work in school, working as a social worker, and doing...

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Posted in: graduate school,hospice

An Interesting Request

So I went to visit one of our new hospice patients last week. This was a really nice patient and we had a great visit. As we were nearing the end of our conversation, I asked her if she had any goals for her time as a hospice patient. Her response: “I’d love to ride with Mark Martin.” Now, I had no idea who Mark Martin was, but I guess he’s some kind of NASCAR driver (I don’t follow racing, but everyone in my town loves it). She was half-joking, and the race does not come here for another couple of months so I don’t know if it would be possible anyway. Still, I thought to myself, it’d sure be super cool to make her dream come true. I've always kind of thought that one of the jobs of a social worker is to help make people's dreams come true,...

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Posted in: hospice