My Self-Reection on My Growth as a Social Worker

My Readiness to Move into a Professional Role

I have learned a lot from this semester and it mostly centered around conict
resolution skills. I have learned a lot about how to handle conict and this is important
because there will always be some kind of conict, whether it be among the staff at my
work place or conict with a client. I dealt with conict among the staff at my agency.
First the conict was with the agency and the interns because clear boundaries and
responsibilities were not set from the start of the internship. It was hard for me to deal
with ambiguity because I was new to the agency and didn"t know where boundaries
were in regards to what my responsibilities were. There was also continual conict with
the project manager because there was limited transparency as to how clients were
being served. Although much of this conict was mediated by Lisa, I was able to
observe the skills she uses when she is in a mediator role. I learned that it is extremely
important to allow each party to tell their side of the story and to make sure the
environment is open to allow for discussion.
Although I learned a lot from observing the mediation process, it was much
harder for me to do this when I had a personal conict with my internship partner. It was
very hard for me to stay impartial and to get my points across in a calm manner. The
biggest thing that I learned from dealing with this issue is to be upfront and honest about
the way I am feeling and to spin it in a way that allows for positive communication in the
future. I feel badly about the way I handled the issue, and am upset that my relationship
with my partner is so strained now. I feel like I need to practice being a mediator
between clients before I am condent to be my own mediator when I am having a
personal conict with a staff member. I believe that I have gained a lot of skills to work
through conict, whether it be through observation, personal experience, or conict
resolution training. I am prepared to practice this role in a professional environment, and
know the areas where I need to improve to be effective in this role.
Besides conict resolution skills, I have also learned how to advocate for a client.
As I mentioned above, the project manager was very difcult to work with and I
advocated for my clients to receive services every week. Recently I have been
advocating extremely hard for a client who was added to my cases. I have advocated
for her within my agency, to our project engineer, and to my project manager. I have set
up one-on-one meetings between the project manager and I, so we can talk in depth
about her case and to stress how important it is to provide her with services. I have
discussed her case with other agencies and have gured out which services they can
provide for her. I am able to advocate for my clients in a professional manner, but also
portray my empathy and concern for them to other people and agencies. I think this is a
very important skill and I think people are more willing to help when they can tell how
concerned you are for your client. I am extremely ready to utilize this role in a
professional setting, and I have already had a lot of practice as an advocator.
I have learned a lot from my placement at Serve 6.8 and feel condent to move
on as a professional social worker. One of the biggest things that I will take way from
this internship is to be genuine and honest in every interaction you have with a client.
This is easier said than done for me because I want to appear competent and
knowledgeable, which sometimes causes me to not ask questions that seem nosy. I am
excited to continue to develop my social work skills in the professional realm and to
keep growing as an individual.
Supervision Needs
During this semester I had to learn to cope with a large amount of ambiguity
when it came to the role that I would play within the agency. I was just looking back on
my earlier paper about my needs for supervision, and I have grown to want more
supervision as the semester came to an end. I chose Serve 6.8 because I wanted to
have autonomy and to be able to advocate for change on my own. Since the beginning
of the semester I have felt like my position was so loosely dened that I would have
liked to have a little more supervision. I think it is helpful for me to be able to shadow
someone when I am rst starting out, and I wish my agency had provided me with this
supervision prior to sending me out into the eld. I also really relied on using supervision
for case consultation and trainings, which was extremely helpful for me. I like to be able
to go to my supervisor or eld instructor to talk about my cases. I am a talker and like to
talk through my issues, which is very similar to case consultations. I found that I need a
good amount of supervision when it comes to case consultations, but other than that I
am pretty autonomous. I also like roles that are dened and have boundaries already
established. It was hard for me to deal with the ambiguity of my agency because I didn"t
know what responsibilities I had or needed to take on. In the future I would like to take
on a position that has more structure.
Self Care Plan
My rst step for self care is to be done with school. By nishing school it will allow
me to focus on my job and then clearly compartmentalize my work life from my personal
life. After I am done with school I will be able to do a lot more self care, because
currently I am doing a 30/week unpaid internship, working part time, and going to
school. This is too much. I currently don"t have any time for myself and when I do all I
want to do is sleep. Once I am done with school I will walk or run outside at least twice a
week. I will continue to do yoga, and hopefully be able to go to yoga at least three times
a week. I will also pick up a hobby like home brewing and being more involved at the
community garden where I volunteer.
My Involvement in SOWK 492
I loved my seminar class and my small group within the class. I thought it was
super helpful to have the same group throughout the semester, so we could discuss our
issues with our internships and really become supportive of each other. I was the most
engaged during these small groups because I had a lot of issues with my agency. I was
also always on time and thought it was interesting to hear different people"s
experiences. I loved hearing from guest speakers and learned a lot of skills that I would
not have learned from my agency. I also thought Joni"s stories were extremely helpful
and I will keep them in mind when I start my professional career. I really liked coming to
seminar and I was really engaged.
My Future as a Social Worker
I am a reader when I am not in school. Since I have been preoccupied with
nishing school, I have not had time to read and so I have been collecting a long list of
books that I want to read. Many of the books on this list are about therapy techniques
and I am excited to learn from something other than the dry text books that I have been
reading for the past four years. I like to learn and I am excited to continue growing by
harvesting my own interests.
As for my future as a social worker, I am not sure where I will be in ve years. My
ultimate life goal is to join the Peace Corps, and that is why I originally got into social
work. I have currently been overwhelmed by school and internship so I have not been
able to apply for the program yet. I am currently all over the place and don"t know what I
want to do. My overarching envision for my life is to help foster synergistic communities
that are healthy and supportive of their community members. I am interested in a lot of
different issues and would ultimately like to help communities become more supportive
of the people that make up their neighborhoods. I am interested in everything and can"t
wait to learn and apply this learning to the communities that I am working with. In ve
years I hope I am happy and passionate about the work that I am doing, and sharing
this energy with the people in my community.