What can I do with my JD/MSW degree?
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Anonymous
OP here. I was pursuing my LCSW licensure in my social work job. It was taking longer than 2 years to get these hours because the workplace didn't have enough clients for me to earn these hours in a timelier fashion (it was slow). I was halfway to earning my hours with supervision when I resigned because I was expecting twins (I conceived naturally, it was a big surprise). We had no family in the area (this was in another state) and husband traveled frequently for work so we felt the best thing was for me to resign to be a SAHM. However, I lost all those hours due to the time limit for getting all the hours in. So now I am starting from zero hours when looking to start supervision for my LCSW. It is very hard to find a job in social work that leads to licensure--the right supervision, etc. It took me almost a year to find this job in the other state. Additionally, we live in Ashburn, which is very far from all the non profits in the city where I could volunteer to get my resume up to date, so I'm concerned about how I can get my resume up to date. It's not really practical for me to be driving into the city to these non proffits daily at least. So I'm trying to think where/how I could get this volunteer experience to get my skills up to date. If I tried to take the bar exam I worry it would be like studying organic chemistry to me. I have recently looked at some bar prep materials and nothing looked familiar or made sense. Could I really pass the bar exam? I've been out of law school so long that I don't know. |
Anonymous
| There are senior services everywhere, don't feel like you would have to drive to DC to volunteer. Just look for senior centers etc. near you. I know it sounds big and scary to build a career again, but you can do it. Just take it one step at a time. |
Anonymous
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Look into non profits in your area they are more likely to let you start without a license and give you time to get a license while providing supervision.
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Anonymous
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UR for a health insurance company? Health care administrator/risk manager?
Maybe a coach/therapist can assist you in the process. Good luck. |
Anonymous
OP here. You are right, everything you said about me, you are right. I am lazy, and I have very little career motivation these days. I attribute this to 2 things: 1) very, very low energy (have had blood tests, and the only thing they can find is very low Vitamin D levels, which I have taken supplements for, but it has not increased my energy.) I've been low energy since high school. Have been tested for thyroid, Lyme, etc. everything is negative. I saw an endocrinologist, they found nothing. The low energy makes me feel very tired and lethargic a lot. I feel that I don't have a ton of stamina to tackle the complicated and boring material. I zone out with boring and complicated material a lot. 2) Career failure after failure has made me not want to try, in order to not continue to fail. It's easier to not work hard/not try and therefore not fail than to work hard and try hard and fail. I have worked hard professionally and personally and failed so many times that my self-esteem is in shambles from failure after failure. I'm not sure how to recover from this. I tried therapy, I found it unhelpful. I was thinking today about how I could slowly try to build my self-esteem again--maybe setting very, very small goals, succeeding in those, and then tackling larger goals. |
Anonymous
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Reading your story reminds me a lot of myself! I have a JD and went to law school because I wanted to help people, am a good writer, both my parents are lawyers, and I didn’t know what else to do, to be honest. I felt like you before college – was interested in health care and thought about going pre-med, but was bad at math and science, so I went in another direction. I did fine in law school (above a 3.0 but short of cum laude) and passed the bar, but also found a lot of the material terribly boring and hard to understand!!! I also was terrible at all the adversarial stuff (e.g., the pretend trial work that you have to do your first year). I am now an attorney with the federal government and am bored to death. I started out as a regulatory analyst with the fed govt (non-lawyer position), but was bored doing that so thought I would try out the lawyer thing. I have been practicing for three years now and I find it so difficult to concentrate on the complicated stuff and am also so bored/ uninterested with this subject matter (financial regulation, banks, and privacy mostly). I also started having really bad anxiety after coming back to work after having my daughter (post-partum anxiety) – panic attacks, having trouble breathing – so I forced myself to see a therapist. She has made me realize that a lot of my anxiety stems from my job. The only good thing about the anxiety is that it forced me to take a hard look at my situation and do something about it! I’m no longer seeing the therapist (I’m feeling a lot better anxiety-wise), but I have started seeing a career counselor who specializes in lawyers and he is helping me through next steps.
I’ve taken some aptitude assessments (Meyers-Briggs, etc.) and, based on my results there, have been considering making a move into a “helping” profession like nursing, speech therapy, teaching, counseling. Now that I am a mom, I can’t imagine going back to school and juggling that with motherhood, so I am leaning towards transitioning into something where I can help/ counsel (preferably one-on-one) but don’t need another degree. So, I’m thinking about working in higher education administration in the career services office or working for a nonprofit where I can help people. My federal government gig is great flexibility-wise and salary-wise, but I’m just getting to a point where I need to be doing something more meaningful/ fulfilling if I am going to be away from my daughter all day long. When I will actually jump ship is TBD (we’ll probably have another baby and so the timing will be tricky), but I am taking steps to try to figure out what would make me happier – self-assessment (career books, seeing a career counselor, taking aptitude tests), self-care (focusing on my strengths instead of beating myself up over my weaknesses or the feeling that I am the worst attorney in my office), informational interviewing, talking to friends/ neighbors about what they do. Anyway, I just wanted to share my story to let you know that you are not alone in feeling like you are dumb because you don’t understand the law. You are a smart person with much to offer. The challenge is figuring out what the best environment is for you to put your skillset to use. Chin up – you’ll figure it out! (And, I am really interested to hear where you end up because we kind of sound like the same person! 
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Anonymous
Hi OP, I'm sorry you've had such a hard time professionally. I do wonder what you characterize as "career failure" and whether you're being far too hard on yourself. Just the way you speak about yourself signals very low self esteem - which you acknowledge - but also suggests a narrow definition of success. As you likely know, you can learn and grow professionally and thrive in a job and not necessarily make it as a CEO - that's not a failure. You can do a job or be on a career track and discover that you actually don't like it ... and that's not a failure. That's actually a good thing. You can be good at your job but contend with things outside your control which make it hard to be as successful as you want to be ... and that's not a failure either. So what is it that constitutes "career failure"? And what in your mind is success? Maybe answering those will help identify where to focus your efforts for the future. |
Anonymous
The last thing OP needs is another degree, plus she said she doesn't like research and writing. She does not need to sink 4 years into a PhD and end up ABD. |