Career change to be a therapist
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
What do you mean by 80% schedule at work? Could you please share what that looks like i-e was it 3 days/week or 7-3am daily? Did they allow you to do it because you were working in social work already? Im working in Finamce, so not sure how my company will take it if im going to school for a degree not relevant to my job. Also, everything im reading online states that you cant work full time and do your MSW, as you wont have time to do all the readings, homework ect plus the school i applied to stated that practicums would be during business hours. How did you manage ? And what type of practicum did you find that was on weekends? TIA |
Anonymous
|
I was able to do my job FT for the first 2 years and then had to quit for my last year while I got my MSW.
For the first 2 years, I worked 7-3:30 and then had school from 5-9ish. I read/wrote papers/etc every weekend. I read whenever I had a free minute. I may or may not have finished up a paper at work for an hour or 2. I quit my FT job in May and did my first field placement 40 hrs/week May-August. From Sept-the following May I went to classes 2 days/week and did my field placement 3 days/week. Hospitals, detention facilities, mental health facilities, treatment programs all have offered evening/weekend placements. |
Anonymous
PP here. So I'm in the Catholic University program that is part time and online. I have a lot of things to say about the program specifically, and if that's where you applied, I'm happy to chat. The specifics are not super germane to the rest of the conversation, though, so just let me know. For my first internship, I just dropped one weekday - so I worked 4 days a week instead of 5 at my office. Originally, I was going to switch a 7a-3p schedule because my internship agency does have a night shift of 4p-midnight that was possible, but for various reasons, I decided that was not going to work well for me. The agency is here in DC and it operates 7 days a week, so I suppose that technically, I _could_ have done all my internship hours on the weekend without reducing my schedule at my office (which is not social work oriented at all - just very flexible). That said, that was for my first internship. The second one is more intensive, and the agencies I'm looking for do not have those flexible hours, so I am currently trying to figure out what the next part looks like. My point is that depending on how your program is structured, you may be able to put off quitting your job for some time. I started the program in early 2015 and finish next spring. I worked 4 days a week for most of last year, and now I'm back to full time. As for time for class, I do most of my reading during my commute (which is 20-40 minutes on the bus), in bed at night, and over my lunch hour. I won't say that I have completely read every single thing that has been assigned, but because my program is structured to be 8-week blocks of one class at a time, I have not felt overwhelmed by the amount of work. There have definitely been times when I have deadlines at work AND at school and things have been stressful, but I would say that's happened maybe 2-3x over the course of the program, and all of those times, I was able to just take a personal day from work to focus on finishing school stuff. |
Anonymous
Got it, you did a 3 year program. The program I applied to is full-time for 2 years. They require 16h/fieldwork the first year and 22h/week the 2nd year, and on the application they said you needed daytime hours available as evening/weekend hours are rare |
Anonymous
You say you don't work in social work, was your undergrad in something similar? mine was in finance so Im guessing i will need more time to study as everything will be new to me. How are you managing papers and work? I head these programs are very paper/research intensive. The program I am looking at requires 16h/fieldwork a week the first year and 22h/week the 2nd year, not sure what job in Finance will allow me that flexibility sadly. Also, we are relocating to the NY/NJ area so I applied to schools there. My guess was to find a new job once we move, but my expertise is in Finance, so I doubt i can find a job in social work without any experience/degree right when we move that would afford me the flexibility to work the schedules you described. Plus, with it being a new job, I don't think they will be that flexible unless i am really lucky. The only way I see it working is if I quit working, which I don't really wanna do. It is very stressful! |
Anonymous
|
I used to be a field instructor for MSW students. I would be cautious about assuming that you will be able to find practicums with evening and weekend hours, even if the agency operates outside of traditional business hours. You cannot be there without your supervisor, and the majority of supervisors work traditional hours. For example, a hospital is open 24/7 of course, but the supervisors/field instructors are typically there Mon-Fri 8:30 -5, with occasional on-call responsibilities.
Your practicum is really important, especially as you are coming in to the field without any experience. This will help you decide what area of social work you want to focus on, and could lead to job contacts. I know you mentioned wanting to have a private practice, but as others have mentioned, there is a long road between starting an MSW program, and having the required licensure and experience to start building a viable private practice. As difficult as it may be to quit work, you will do yourself a disservice and potentially get far less out of the experience if you limit yourself to only practicums that occur during off hours. For most MSW programs, you are either full time for two years, with few people maintaining some kind of part time work; or you are part-time for two years, then full time for one year. There is just no way around the need to complete the last year full time, and at most you may be able to do a little part time work during that last year. This is largely due to the practicum requirements, which are essential to the degree. Agree with others that you also want to allow for adequate time for readings, papers, etc., given that this is a brand new field for you. Good luck! |
Anonymous
Hey Pp, thank you for sharing this. I heard that argument as well, that good practicums won't have evening hours. What kind of setting would ypu recommend for someone who wants to go into PP eventually? Yea, i understand that it will be down the road, as I need about 2 years post graduation to complete my supervised hours, exams and all the additional training Ect, but would like to be as ready as I can since that is my goal. Do you think i could work part-time the first year in addition to the practicum or would that be too much for someone with zero experience in the field? |
Anonymous
My undergrad is in political science, so there are some overlaps when talking about the history of oppression the US, but not really. I agree that it's stressful, and also agree with the MSW field instructor below. It really requires a commitment, and if you can stop working, that is really the only way that it will work. My situation works because my program is flexible and my day job is flexible and I've been here for long enough that they know that I can manage both at the same time. They were concerned at first, but because I'd been there long enough, they were willing to give it a shot. That wouldn't happen in a new job. I was actually considering accepting a new job earlier this year (in SW field), but I need the flexibility to finish my last bit of school, so I turned it down. Good luck with whatever you decide! |
Anonymous
Thank you PP. From all the feedback im getting, it seems the only reasonable way to give this a shot is to quit my job for 2 years and fully concentrate on this. It will be a strain on our finances for sure, which scares me i-e paying for school, family surviving on 1 income and potentially years of low salaries after graduation til im able to set a Pp ughh |
Anonymous
I would have some long, long talks with my spouse about it if I were you, OP. One thing I will tell you is that no matter whether you can figure out a way to work part time in your field for a while during school or whether you quit all together, if your spouse is not enthusiastically on board and happy to pick up any slack that is created by your school plans, you will all be miserable. When I was working 6 days a week last year (10 hour days, usually, at least), my spouse, who has never been the primary caregiver, had to be the primary caregiver AND the primary breadwinner. It was really hard for both of us, but he was the one who was in charge of like 90% of kid activities on the weekend and the household logistics. We figured out some ways to make that easier, but if your spouse is not as committed as you are to this change, I would think twice about doing it. |
Anonymous
| Hey Pp, actually my spouse is the one motivating me to do this change, he's actually more excited about it than I am. He believes that I should pursue my passion and quit Banking since that is not making me happy. He is scared of course about the loss of income especially in the 2 years I'd be in school full time, but said he could manage. Im the one stressing about it, but he keeps telling me everything will be fine and he will find a way to make it work and will adjust his schedule if need be. I guess whats making me guilty is puting all of my family on hold, cutting our finances and going through all of this, just because I feel this would be a better career for me. I'd hate to put them all through it and end up failing. If you're fone with the program, and dont mind me asking, what salary ranges are you seeing for new MSW grads? Is there something i canstart doing now to better position myself for better jobs once im done with school? And do you think my experience in business/finance will help once im ready to apply to jobs? |
Anonymous
That's great! That's actually how my spouse is too, but it took me a while to truly believe him 
I'm not done with the program yet, but the jobs my friends who are done have taken are a pretty big range. DC government pays a lot more than nonprofit case management organizations. I have a friend who started with a DC govt agency with a general license. They are sponsoring her clinical license, and she makes like $70k. The job that I turned down was offering $45k, but that's with no MSW. It would probably have been a little higher with the MSW. The best thing that you can do is get a feel for what jobs are available in the area where you live and watch them. I generally know what the government jobs look like and what the nonprofit ones look like. I haven't looked at hospital jobs as much but it's on my list of stuff to start paying attention to. It can be hard to figure out salary information. The numbers I mentioned above are things that I was told directly by the organization or are publicly available. I personally think that a background in business and finance will be good for you, particularly when you get to a point where you are moving to private practice and may be establishing your own business. Not sure what particular flavor of finance you're in, but knowledge about operating a business (vs. a touchy feely clinic where people come to feel better) will serve you well later. It can also open doors to other kinds of work within the field. I know a woman who works as a program analyst whose job is to look at how effective services provided are from a financial AND clinical standpoint. She has a MSW and some kind of finance background. |
Anonymous
I have a broad range of experience in Finance, my undergrad was a mix of Econ and Finance and my masters was in Finance. I have worked a bit on the Accounting side (hated it), corporate finance, credit , risk analysis, and commercial banking . This is all interesting PP, thank you so much for sharing, you have no idea! It is giving me hope that some agencies will pay $70k n free supervision. What sort of firld work have u done so far? What's the field experience like? Do you know what way you will go once u graduate? As in clinical or Macro and why? |
Anonymous
My first internship was a clinical placement with a crisis agency for adults - so psych emergencies, hospitalizations, active suicidality, etc. It was interesting. Pretty hardcore, both in terms of what you see and the pace/hours. I really appreciated the exposure to a lot of the problems of urban poverty that I am fairly insulated from. It gave me a deeper appreciation for a lot of the challenges my city faces and the things that are being done about them. One of the things that I really liked about my internship, as a person who has already had a ton of work experience, was being treated like a member of the team rather than "as an intern." My responsibilities during my field placement were not any different than any other team members, and I wasn't treated differently after the first couple of months. There was supervision that happened, and my supervisor was really attentive and careful to assign me to cases that he thought would be interesting for process reports back to field seminar (where you basically write down a client encounter and use your school knowledge to analyze it). He has been supervising students for a long time and is a LCSW himself, so he knows the requirements of the program as well as what will be useful in a job vs. a classroom. My second internship hasn't been set yet, but it's likely to be something working with children rather than adults. I am expecting that it may be in a school setting, but I have a few different options other than that. After I'm done, I'm looking at clinical jobs. I haven't decided specifically what population or practice setting. I would actually be happy to do crisis work for a few years while I'm getting my clinical license, but my husband thinks that emotionally, I need to be in a situation where I see clients more than once because he noticed that I felt pretty unsettled never knowing what happened to people after I worked with them. He is probably right Either way, like you, I would eventually like to end up in private practice, but I know that's not going to happen for quite some time. The low salary of the field doesn't bother me that much because a) we don't really need the money and b) my current field isn't super lucrative anyway.
|
Anonymous
Great info! I would love to do my internship in a mental setting like the first one you described, and Im with your husband on this one. I would hate not to know what happened to people, so long term will probably be better for me as well. On the money side, im leaving a lucrarive field/career and my family could honestly use the money, we can do without, but our standard of living is definetely way better with the $$ that Finance affords, that's whats scary for us. We would have to downsize and be more frugal if i go to school fulltime, especially the next 2 years. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me, its giving me a lot to think about
|