the education of me (social work and social, work)
this is something i posted to an online group in which i participate, in response to some grumbling about credentials and what they mean:
by way of background, i have both bachelor's and master's degrees in social work, with ten years of job experience in between the time i finished my bachelor's and started my master's degree and now almost fifteen years since being awarded my second degree.
as a person who thinks and feels deeply and has had a number of interesting and challenging life experiences (beginning from the time i popped out of my mother's womb, i might add), i found much of the study material required to earn my bachelor's degree to be "common sense" and stuff that i could learn from independent reading and attending professional and personal growth workshops, and just plain living.
then after getting my bachelor's degree i worked on treatment teams in a myriad of settings with a tremendous variety of clients and patients who brought diverse problems and diagnoses to the table. members of these teams included psychiatric nurses, master's level professionals, doctoral level psychologists as well as psychiatrists, all of whom were licensed and/or certified. i found that the piece of paper and credentials that one holds do not necessarily mean anything in terms of one's ability to effectively and empathically engage with and treat clients/patients. frankly, i was often appalled at the conduct of my colleagues, vis-a-vis each other and toward those same clients/patients.
as sort of an aside, at one point i happened to be working in a company that paid licensed professionals much higher salaries than unlicensed professionals, and i happened to be living in a
jurisdiction that offered a license for bachelor's level social workers. i discovered that i was eligible for this salary "benefit" at the company. five years after getting my BSW, i skimmed through
my undergraduate textbooks over the course of two weeks, took the exam, passed in the 96th percentile, and got a salary increase of 40%, all in one fell swoop. licensed or unlicensed, i was greatly respected by my coworkers and superiors for my clinical skills and although most of my master's level peers resented it, my work was frequently acknowledged over theirs.
i was in a financial position that enabled me to return to school to do my masters. despite the fact that i had earned my bachelor's level license within the previous five years and had been working in
the real world for the past ten years, i was required to do the first year of the master's program, which is usually not required of bachelor's level social workers, simply because it had been more than five years since i had earned my bachelor's degree. students with immeasurably less life, work and educational experience (i have always been a firm believer of continuing education and development) were allowed to skip the first year. absolutely no exceptions were allowed; of course, i enquired. talk about having to jump through (ridiculous, bureaucratic) hoops.
in graduate school, so much of the information presented by the professors - who in many cases had been out of the work world for years if not decades, if they had every been outside of academia at all - was slightly off or just plain wrong (for example: the names and side effects of
psychotropic medications) that i often felt like i was co-teaching my courses when i spoke up in class presentations, especially during the first year. although some of my professors undoubtedly found me annoying, my fellow students enjoyed being in class with me, feeling like they learned so
much more. some professors would even call on me to help them address the questions of other students.
based on some of the comments and questions i heard in class from some of my student colleagues, particularly in reference to their internship (i.e, real world) experiences, i couldn't believe they were being graduated as master's level social workers. for example, some of their comments revealed gross ignorance about other peoples, places, cultures, religions if not downright racism, as well as incredible naivite (or preconceptions and stereotypes) about what makes people tick (or not). yet they were duly passed on through, because they technically made the grades, and most internship supervisors don't have the guts to flunk students.
incidently, one of my internships was so cushy and i was was given so little to do that i saw no legitimate reason to stick rigidly to the hard-and-fast 50-minute per session rule. my supervisor, who would call it a stressful day if she saw more than two clients and would otherwise sit in front of the door to the corridor making fun of clients where anyone passing by in the hall could hear her, literally threatened to flunk me because of that, even going so far as to officially write me up. how twisted is that? of course, she was probably a lot more bothered by my relatively dismissive of her concerns about it than the fact that i didn't feel the need to stick to the 50-minute session; but i digress here.
ultimately i moved to california, where there was an ongoing controversy over the oral licensure exam. after having said all that i have said so far, i must admit that i fully supported the existence of the second exam, much to the dismay of many of my colleagues. i supported it because i had seen so much incompetence among my professional peers and those with supposedly "higher" education and credentials than i had, and heard so many of what i will call "horror stories" from clients about their past therapists (and i am referring to conduct that was clearly actionable by legal or other authorities, not stuff that "in my opinion ...") that i felt like one more hoop was the least we as a profession could require for potential new members to pass through in order to become licensed as psychotherapists.
ironically enough, by that time i was doing a lot of administrative work and didn't prioritize getting licensed for so long that the oral exam questions were incorporated into the written exam and the
separate oral portion was abolished by the board by the time i actually took the integrated licensure exam. so, lucky for me, that was one less hoop that i personally had to pass through.
i hope that i haven't sounded arrogant or full of myself herein; that really isn't my style. my intention is to simply report my lived experience, as it relates to these topics. my apologies to all of the hard-working, ethical, qualified mental health professionals on the list; obviously, none of this is about you, and none of it was meant to be taken personally. as far as i know, none of you were my professors, instructors, student colleagues, or coworkers. :-)
my point in all this is: i agree that we must have standards in the profession, and that we must hold people to those standards; and as proud as i am of my licensure and as dearly as i hold and uphold it, i also agree that licensing and credentialing are not necessarily the be-all and end-all, in the u.s. or in any other place in the world.
just my two-and-a-half cents.
