I am struggling to figure out what I could possibly say that would sum up my feelings towards my time as a BSW student coming to an end. (It doesn't help that there is so much going on in our world right now! I can't deal.)

I guess I should first tell you a little bit about my plans for the future (yes, I'm finally ready to talk.) I was accepted into an advanced standing MSW program in Philadelphia, but I have decided that I will (most likely) be turning it down so that I can pursue a full-time BSW job. I haven't been offered any jobs yet, but I am super excited about my decision. It just feels right to be taking my time with my education, and looking for opportunities to develop my social work practice so that I can get even more out of my future graduate education. I love social work a lot, and I'm sure that I want to stay in this field, but I want to take some time to work and learn more about myself and the field before I go for an MSW or another grad degree. I am also really looking forward to using all the knowledge that I have acquired from my NYU experience as I enter into a BSW-level position. I am so excited to immerse myself into the field whole-heartedly.

I guess I will leave you with some things that I have learned from my wisest teachers of the past four years: my clients. This, among so many things, is what they taught me:

People are capable of so much more than we tend to give them credit for.

The ability to truly listen to and be present with someone can move mountains.

Thank you to my clients, my peers and colleagues, my friends and family, my teachers, and everyone who has brought me to this important moment in my life. I have grown so much in the past four years, and I am so grateful to every single person who challenged me, motivated me, and supported me. Thank you to my readers for bearing witness to it all. I wish all of you nothing but the best. Congratulations to my fellow graduates! Let's go change the world now.

I remember learning in one of many psychology class about motivation. While most people imagine that a stress-free life would be pretty awesome, researchers say that it is important for people to have sort of a mid-level, healthy amount of stress. Stress sucks a lot of the time, but some stress can motivate a person and help them to maintain a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Maybe this is a weird connection to be making, but I feel like getting the most out of endings requires us to be both excited about and a little bit fearful of what the future holds. While it is wonderful and important to be so excited and ready for our next step, it is also important and very human to be a little bit scared about what that next step entails. I feel like I often want to protect myself by "checking out" of what I'm doing now and focusing on the future, but I wonder if this is really healthy for me. That fear of the unknown makes me want to embrace my current situation and soak up as much of the present as possible. While all of the reflection that I've been engaging in scares me and is incredibly emotional, it is such an important part of this ending process. It is what will allow me to take all that I have learned in this part of my life into the next part.

I will hopefully be ready to share with you my plans for the future very soon, but for now, I encourage everyone, especially my graduating readers, to engage in some important reflection during this time. What has been meaningful for you this year (or in all the years of this part of your life)? What will you take with you into your next step?

I had heard beforehand that the Bodies exhibit was quite controversial - many speculate about where the bodies displayed in the exhibit actually come from, and some say it is just unethical and disrespecful to have the bodies just one display and dissected for all to see. I personally went into the exhibit focusing less on the ethics and more on the scientific value of the exhibit. I assumed that the bodies must have been donated to science. More power to those people who wanted their bodies to help educate others!

Little did I know, I was in for a rude awakening. A staff member at Bodies gave us an introduction to the exhibit and its history. He explained that the 16 full cadavers that were on display were bodies that were abandoned at the morgue - no family members had come to the morgue to claim the body. These bodies were subsequently donated to science by the morgue.

Immediately, this made me uncomfortable. As we walked through the exhibit, I felt very emotional. The people who these bodies belonged to did not necesarily intend for this to happen to their bodies. They did not voluntarily donate them to science. It seemed so exploitative. I thought about the many clients who I have worked with who have little or no connection to their families. Did these bodies belong to people who were homeless? Immigrants? Missing? Either way, these bodies were left alone.

I think that the exhibit did take some measures to show respect for the bodies - for example, no pphotographs were allowed to be taken in the exhibit. But there were some parts of the exhibit that seems unnecessarily exploitative. For example, the bodies were positioned in ways that were kind of disrespectful - I won't go into detail, since some of you might plan on visiting the exhibit, but I think that the message of "Bodies" would have been just as effective if the Bodies were posed more naturally.

I'm glad that I went to the exhibit, and I definitely would encourage others to check it out. Bodies definitely challenged me to think differently about my typically enthusiastic support of all things that can promote education and health. How much of an impact does Bodies really have on the people who have seen it? Is that impact worth potentially exploiting and disrespecting these mysterious bodies?

A lot to think about. Damn you social work school. I don't have time for all this reflection.

1) Having an entire week that focuses on allies takes away from the individual movements of oppressed groups. By putting so much focus on allies, we continue to oppress these groups. It is a good thing for people who don't identify with certain oppressed groups to stand in solidarity with the group, but we must always remember that the power of these movements lies within the oppressed individuals, not their privileged allies.

2) A person cannot necessarily identify themselves as an ally for all groups that are oppressed. Unfortunately, there is so much oppression in our country and in the world, that it is somewhat unrealistic to have an in depth understanding of the struggle of each of these groups. It seems almost unethical to identify as an ally for so many diverse groups when we cannot necessarily claim to be informed of all of them.

3) The term "ally" is unnecessary and kind of oppressive. To receive the title of "ally" (this week "allies" also received t-shirts, buttons, and lollipops) just for being a person who is trying to understand their own privilege and stand in solidarity with oppressed groups allows "allies" to be glorified and almost benefit from the existing oppression. And in my opinion, if you are someone who is trying to understand your own privilege and power and stand in solidarity with certain oppressed groups, you are a good human being. There's really no need for a special title.

I shared my feelings about Ally Week with my supervisors and my co-RAs, and it was all super well received. I definitely think that the idea of Ally Week has really great, important intentions, but I think that it could have been executed in ways that are more positive for these many oppressed groups.

This blog post states a lot of my feelings about the term "ally" way better than I ever could Do you have any thoughts about Ally Week? I would love to hear from you!

Service programs
A few of my BSW peers have been accepted into Teach for America, a two-year program that seeks to reinvigorate underpriveleged schools by training and placing college graduates of all academic backgrounds into teaching positions. The program is founded upon ideas like innovation, cultural responsiveness and meeting individuals where they are. TFA teachers also enjoy lots of benefits, such as a full salary and assistance with obtaining one's master's degree in education. Other service organizations with similar values as TFA are the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and City Year, among many other smaller or private organizations. BSW students have a huge advantage applying for theise types of programs due to our experiences in the field and the socially just and person-centered values that have been instilled in us.

BSW-level employment at social work organizations
BSW jobs do exist! All sorts of organizations are actively searching for BSW students to fulfill their needs. Whether you are interested in direct service, community organizing, or research, there is a need for BSW students in many positions. I used to think that BSW students were extremely limited in their job search and could only apply for positions in areas such as case management. But after beginning my own job search, I've found that lots of organizations are starting to become more aware of the vast array of skills that BSW students have and how relevant these skills are to diverse positions. If you're looking for a BSW-level job I've found that www.idealist.org is a great website to get you started.

Post-graduate education other than the MSW

Some of my peers are also enrolled in or considering going for graduate degrees in other fields. My friend Jackie is going to Columbia for her master's in public health after graduation. I've also met social work students who are planning on going to medical school or law school in the future. Some are looking to get teaching degrees or nursing degrees. Others are looking into master's of business or public administration degrees, often hoping to become social entrepreneurs. I completely believe that a BSW education equips students with skills that would allow them to succeed in so many different educational programs. Our desire to make life better for individuals and communities through our work is impressive and desirable to schools. Our empathy and resourcefulness, among many other skills, make us assets to these programs.

Don't get me wrong - I definitely want to continue my social work education at some point in life, through an MSW program or another similar graduate program. But it's exciting to become more aware of all of the opportunities that are available to myself and my peers after we graduate. Even though many of the employment positions that I would prefer require an MSW, it's wrong for me to think that I can't contribute to the social work field with a BSW. As I've stressed to consumers at my vocational group at my field placement, you can go really far in careers, schools, anything, if you are aware of your strengths and able to highlight them. I've acquired so many skills and ideas from my BSW education, and I'm thrilled to apply them to whatever it is that I end up doing after graduation.

I think that there are a lot of things that have happened in my life this year that have resulted in my calm state of mind during this crazy time of year, but a couple things definitely stick out to me. I have talked with countless friends, mentors, and professors about my grad school-work dilemma. Although they all have different educational backgrounds and opinions about what is best, they have all told me that I really can't go wrong regardless of the decision that I make. Grad school and work are both opportunities for learning and growth. Either way, I'm not going to screw up my life based on this decision.

The importance and power of reflection has also been deeply instilled in me this year (maybe there was some value in all that process recording...). I have a lot of great stuff going on in my life this year - including but not limited to a deeper appreciation and love for the social work profession, exciting growth in my relationships with my partner, friends, and family, and graduation from four amazing years of learning. I wrote a few posts back about how much I want to commit myself to appreciating these good things that are happening. I think practicing this mindfulness has really helped me to remain calm about my future and take each day as it comes.

For those of you who are graduating, what are your thoughts about your future? How can we balance appreciating this exciting time in our lives with taking steps to organize our future plans?

All of the changes this week have made me more aware that I will be ending my placement soon. By the time I end, it will have been nearly a year and a half since I began the placement. It will be a huge milestone as well as an important goodbye for me, and in bearing witness to the consumers' reactions to some of the recent changes, I'm realizing that my departure may have more of an effect than I might think.

I began the early stages of termination with some of my individual clients and groups this week (for me, that meant letting them know how much longer we would be able to work together and getting a rough idea of how they wanted to spend that time), and it definitely brought up a lot of mixed emotions for me. I was reminded of how much I care about the people that I work with (both staff and consumers) and how much I will miss them. I was excited by the idea that a new beginning would follow the end of this part of my life (although I'm still not yet sure what that beginning will look like...more on that later...). But most of all, I wondered what I will feel like when that last day of placement really does come. Will I cry? What, if anything, will my clients have accomplished through our work? And most of all, will I feel as though I have truly made an impact on this agency?

Right now I am going to do my best to focus on preparing my consumers for my departure and making sure that our final weeks are as productive as possible. But I am definitely feeling a lot of emotions during the termination process (it doesn't help that "termination" just sounds like a scary word), and I'm hoping that my own self-awareness and reflection will help me through the process.

It sucks to be apart again and back to hectic work schedules (and midterms and a looming graduation for me) but I'm really proud of myself for choosing not to spend my break worrying about the stressful things that I'm coming back to now, particularly the looming graduation. Instead, I just focused on being happy doing exactly what I was doing, and let me tell you, it was pretty amazing.

Being mindful and appreciative of the present moment is something that I've worked on personally for a really long time. (I have also encountered many clients, friends, students, coworkers...who are working on it as well.). And as hard as it is to focus on happiness in the midst of finals and my unpredicable post-graduation future, I am taking a vow (you are my witnesses!) to try to be mindful and appreciative of my life as it is this very moment. And when I take the time for it, it's not hard to think about all that I have to be appreciative of. I have just spent an amazing week with someone who I love. I am close to graduating, meaning that I will have completed four challenging, yet life-changing years at NYU. And right now, the sun is shining outside my window. At least for today, I won't let my worries allow me to waste all of these joys.

One of our assigments this week was to complete a CBT worksheet that would help us to identify and deconstruct our own maladaptive thoughts. After completing the worksheet and talking about it in class, it was definitely clear that even I am guilty of beating myself up with my thoughts at times, and for no valid reasons. I found that the things I worry about, like making mistakes at my internship, were being blown out of proportion. Of course I will make mistakes - I'm a student - and when I do make mistakes, it probably won't be as disastrous as I l let myself think it will be.

While I think that it is incredibly important for social workers and students to seek out their own therapy and self care activities, the lessons on CBT were a nice reminder that much of what I learn in social work school can be personally therapeutic and beneficial. My practice class also recently discussed creative therapies, like yoga, meditation, and dance, as possibilities for our work with clients, but also for our own personal benefit. I definitely can't choose the most important lesson that I've learned in social work school, but one of them is certainly that I won't be able to be there for another human being if I'm not there for myself first. I will never be perfect at this - my maladaptive thoughts will come back at times (which is why therapy and self care is so important!) but if I continue to grow in my self-awareness, I will not let my bad stuff affect my social work practice.

It was really exciting and encouraging to hear that empathy, arguably the most important quality in a great social worker, was such an important component in the the incredible ideas of the social entrepreneurs that Bill told us about. And these were big ideas - many of them had been implemented in schools or other institutions all over the world, and several had resulted in changes in policies and laws. While I am aware of and super inspired by the creative initiatives that many of my peers in Silver have been involved with, such as Powerhouse, I never really had the ambition to consider creating my own social work program or initiative. I think that I'm starting become a little more open to it though. My four years in Silver and my variety of experiences in the helping profession have really opened my eyes to how important innovation and creativity are in this field. And just as the social work field has adopted tools from the business world, it's great to see that our skills, such as empathy, also have value in diverse kinds of work. While I definitely want to spend more time learning and working before coming up with any really big ideas for the field (although POPS has been great practice for social innovation!) the lecture got me really excited about all the possibilities that I can look forward to getting involved with within social work.

In October, I blogged about the beginning steps I was taking to apply to public health graduate programs. After serious consideration, self-reflection, and discussion with professors and professionals I trust, I decided to apply for a MPH rather than a MSW. I wrestled with the guilt of leaving social work behind, but realized that my interests were aligned in public health. Throughout the year, I have been challenged as both a senior in Silver and a future MPH student. In class, I speak up about my decision to not pursue a MSW in hopes that it may help my peers also struggling with “life after graduation” decisions to elect what is right for them. Similarly, although enjoying direct client contact at my field placement, I also welcomed opportunities to analyze data and assess the agency from a population-based perspective. I have found a balance between both worlds, and I have grown both as a social worker and as a public health researcher.

While my social work peers worked on their MSW applications, I applied to completely different programs. I filled out applications for six schools spread throughout the country. And, I am proud to say that, in fall 2011, I will pursue my MPH at Columbia University! Standard MPH programs last for two years, and include a 280-hour practicum requirement that is somewhat similar to a social work student’s field placement. The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia is split into different departments, although MPH students get to dabble in all areas. I will be a student in Social Science Research in Public Health through the Sociomedical Sciences department. My ultimate goal is to receive a PhD related to public health, and the Social Science Research track will prepare me for future doctoral level studies.

Deciding to not apply for a MSW has, in some ways, afforded me unique benefits at my field placement. My passion for public health enables me to see my clients (almost all with HIV/AIDS) and my agency differently that I would solely as a social work student. Public health is population / community focused, and it is exciting to look at the entire population served by my agency, rather than just my caseload. Ultimately, my clients receive trickle down benefits from the public health work I will soon be involved in. For example, syringe exchange programs receive funding based on research proving the effectiveness of such programs in reducing HIV and hepatitis C transmission. Without the public health workers and researchers studying SEPs, my clients would not have access to clean, safe needles. I look forward to becoming a public health worker that continues to support client needs, just from a macro-level.

So, I'm staying New York - at least for the next two years! I can't say that I'll never return for a MSW (the Advanced Standing status of BSW students is valid for five years), but for now I am looking forward to my MPH studies.

The Field Supervisor

Whether you end up hating your field supervisor or loving them (or doing a little bit of both), your experiences and interactions with this person will teach you a lot about yourself and the type of social worker that you want to become. I won't go into details with my relationship with my supervisor, but I will say that she has encouraged me to be a better advocate for myself and to be my own motivator and critic.

The Amazing Professor(s)

I truly hope that every student will be able to be in a class with an incredible, unforgettable teacher. I am so grateful to have had so many fantastic professors at Silver, the College of Arts and Sciences, and NYU in Ghana, but one social work professor will always stick out in my mind as a person who really opened my eyes to why this education and this work is so important. Her warmth, energy, and passion for social justice and humanity has deeply influenced my work as a student, and I know it will penetrate my future career as well.

The Distracter

This is the friend that every social work student needs. This person could not care less about social work school or your field placement, and they definitely don't want to hear about your client meetings or papers or any of that nonsense. This person just wants to have fun with you. They will help you to truly separate yourself from your work for a little while, which I have learned is an incredibly important part of self-care.

A Therapist/Case Manager/Social Worker of Your Own

Just as you will need someone to distract you, you will also need someone to be there for you with the stuff that you do need to process. For many social work students, myself included, seeking out formal counseling services can be hugely beneficial. But you can also find support in other ways - through your peers (my practice class can be super therapeutic), teachers, supervisors, friends and family. Being a student can be rough in general, but when you throw in the emotional content that social work involves it can get even worse. It is so important to create a supportive environment so that you can explore your feelings, and in turn, be a better social worker.

An Unforgettable Client

It's that person who challenged you. Or maybe just the person who made you laugh or smile every day. Or maybe it's the person that you saw so much strength in. A lot of times it's the person that you always wish you could do more for. In any case, I feel like almost all of the social work students have had a certain client, or group, or interaction that has made them feel something powerful that teaches them and makes them think. My experience with this has been a humbling one - I have learned that people are stronger, wiser, and more capable than we give them credit for. It is my hope for a social work student to find that it is their clients who will teach them the most.

What have been your most important relationships in social work school or as a social worker? If you are a prospective student, who do you hope to meet?

I'm pretty sure I was struck with senioritis somewhere between listening to my social work practice professor describing the grueling final assignment that would plague our last several weeks of the semester, and receiving an email last Thursday that school was closed due to the snow. That was when I thought about what a productive day off this could be, and all the assignments I could get done. But instead of doing that, I changed my facebook status to "SNOW DAY!", fell asleep for about four more hours, and proceeded to spend the rest of the day playing in the snow, eating sushi, and watching movies with friends.

I think that part of my extreme slacking off and procrastination recently is coming from the realization that I only have four months left of being in New York City, yet I feel like I have very little time to enjoy myself. I've written many times about the challenges that I and many of my peers face with self-care, but the issue has become so much more pressing to me at this point in my life and my education. I still care deeply about the social work field and I want to be able to do my readings and thoroughly complete assignments and be a "superintern", but these responsibilities are so consuming and I am exhausted. To find a balance between my professional life and my personal life and work and self-care has been one of the biggest challenges of the past three and a half years. I feel like something is always being sacrificed, and I don't like that.

So, readers, I am one again reaching out to you for some self-care tips - what do you do to create balance in your life?

While it has been so important in my work to be aware of the many differences between myself and my clients, this year has also been a time where I've realized how much of the human experience is shared. Last week, I got some unexpected, scary news that caused me to reevaluate some things and change some plans. While I tried to deal with the situation as logically and calmly as I could, there were a lot of times where I just felt sad, panicked and lost.

When I sat down to facilitate a group at my placement that week about resolutions for the New Year, I listened to my clients discuss their accomplishments in 2010 and their goals for 2011. But I also heard them bring up how upsetting it was when a wrench was thrown into their plans, and how easy it was to want to fall apart. While I hadn't necessarily been through what they were talking about, I had felt the feeling that they were describing. The openness of my clients combined with my connection to their emotions allowed for a group meeting that seemed to be encouraging and uplifting for everyone, myself included.

I don't think that it is wise to ever try to convince our clients that we know exactly what they are going through - we don't. No one can, because each experience is so different. But this empathetic experience was a much needed reminder of why I wanted to do this work. When it comes down to it, there is little that separates us from our clients. Much of the time, access to resources is the only difference. This experience humbled me and reminded me that an unconditional love for people as a whole should always be at the core of my work.