During some down time around the office at Headquarters, I decided to ask my field instructor if she would answer some questions for me for this assignment, and she graciously accepted. I already knew a lot about her background and job as a social worker, both from a clinical and administrative standpoint (since she also does therapy in addition to her Headquarters work), but it was fun to hear her stories again and even learn a few new details along the way.
My field instructor, Kristin, is a social worker who received her MSW from KU. As I mentioned earlier, she does clinical work in a private practice she has with her mom, which means several times a week her clients will come to Headquarters for therapy sessions, and sometimes she will …show more content…
One of those, as you can assume from reading the above paragraph, is scheduling. Coordinating all the people who need to be coordinated, whether it be scheduling, training, or other activities, is a very complicated part of the job. A "basic social work response" she had to the question was not having enough time in the day to do everything. It often seems like things that need to be done get left for the next day because there is so much to do. Another challenging part of the job is that at times, it feels like talking about suicide is like "shouting into the wind" from the standpoint of creating change. When she gives talks to different audiences around the state, sometimes she can tell that people are not receiving it or engaging with the concept as they should, and it can feel defeating. She knows, though, that talking about it is better than nothing. On the flip side of things, she has many favorite parts of her job, but to limit the length of my paper she decided to give me her top three. First, volunteers are her most favorite thing about her job. There is something easing about being around such unique, special people who are willing to give up their time to talk to others through crisis. It's refreshing for her, and gives her great energy to be surrounded by "awesome" people. Another great thing about her job is training.