Master's in Social Work?

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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TopHatFox
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Master's in Social Work?

Post by TopHatFox »

So, it turns out that INFJs like and are great at anything that involves helping people, especially one-on-one.

And, it turns out that one can't get a good paying job in this field or similar fields without a Master's.

Which means, that I'm thinking of pursuing an MSW at a high-ranked and well fitting school that gives me the most fin aid.

I'm going to do more research on the subject, and speak to some previous people who I know have gotten the degree.

Meanwhile I'll go to work.
Last edited by TopHatFox on Fri Dec 01, 2017 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by Kriegsspiel »

Social workers are well-paid???

Maybe you should just get a job at a university whose benefits include taking classes for free and get a Masters that way. I've been piecing together a list for a while, if you want it.

TopHatFox
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by TopHatFox »

Yes please, that sounds useful. Yeah, the median salaries for MSW graduates is 60-70K

CS
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by CS »

It's not easy to get a job in that field. I'd pay close attention to how many actually gets jobs. It does you no good if only five people can get well paid jobs, and you are not one of the five. My step-sister was in social work - she now works in a bank.

slowtraveler
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by slowtraveler »

Lacking Ambition and Mad Fientist got their education sponsored. This might count as taxable income though, consult your tax expert there.

I agree with CS here. I know of 3 people with high degrees in social work. One works with homeless people and helps them get housing and get back on track. He also works as a bartender on nights to actually pay the bills. Another graduated from Berkeley, last I saw her was as an assistant receptionist at a doctor's office. The last I met at a meet up, graduated from Stanford. Last I saw him, he was still looking for work but he was really friendly, I'm rooting for him.

You get paid to do things that other people want enough to give you money for. Business owners tend to be the ones with money and very few are in the social work field.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor because helping people with a certain medical herb was my passion. I volunteered at a hospital and interviewed many doctors. One said that his passion was watching movies but he'd hate it if he had to do it for money. Passion and work don't have to overlap. I scoffed at his answer back then but now I see the wisdom in it. Competence brings joy. I feel I'd have fun if I was an accountant doing good work as a self employed but that doesn't mean I enjoy it as much as eating good food. Another doctor, the head surgeon of heart surgery there told me not to go down this route if there was a single doubt about it. Stop early if I feel doubts because the journey there is long. Happy I listened to them both.

You don't need a lot to survive, that is a huge strength, how can you just start making money now? A degree is no guarantee of a job. Working hard at anything you do, even flipping patties and taking orders, opens new doors. You have more money, maybe you make manager and make money faster or find a new job after making more money, or get education benefits, or medical benefits. I've met therapists working for $40/hr of work done but spending more time trying to get clients than giving sessions, cutting their income per hour by more than half. Can you work at a Whole Foods or Sprouts as a manager? You had other job offers before too you could look into. You can be done in 5 years of working, but not if you go the master's in social work route. Then sunk cost fallacy may kick in and drag on these current feelings for much longer.

TopHatFox
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by TopHatFox »

Hm, maybe what I'll have to do is what another INFJ-like person does on here. I'll have to try my best to see how my work helps people, whatever that work is.

Are people on this board generally opposed to entrepreneurship or graduate education?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I am pro entrepreneurship, graduate school, and helping people, but I think you should try to get paid for any of these activities. I think I recall that you liked "The Art of Non-Conformity?" I would suggest that you go back and read the chapter on the topic of one year, self-directed, alternative to graduate school experience. Basic rule of money is that it flows towards you in the direction of created/perceived value from other people who have money or credit. If you want to help or create value for other people who don't have money, one thing you might consider would be using entrepreneurial skills to create a charitable non-profit that will facilitate the flow of money from people who have it in order to create value for themselves and the people who don't have money. For instance, you could create a non-profit wilderness adventure camping experience for inner-city kids, seek donations from affluent people who think it would be in their own long-term self-interest to promote love of wilderness in young humans, and pay yourself a reasonable salary. Win-win-win!!!

jacob
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by jacob »

TopHatFox wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 9:33 am
Are people on this board generally opposed to entrepreneurship or graduate education?
The engineering triangle says you can pick any two out of the following properties, but only two: good, cheap, and fast.

Let me translate that:
  • Enjoyable (fun, meaningful, making a difference...)
  • High-paying (over $50k)
  • Within the next three years
Pick any two.

PS: I get the distinct(?!) vibe that you're somewhat disappointed that the first few months of real world job experience didn't exactly live up to all the promises of awesomeness that permeate the millennials-sphere and that, rather than pushing on, you're seeking to retreat back into a space where you felt competent and in control, namely, going to classes and accumulating credits for a degree within the school system. Accurate?

PPS: Also, what CS said. For example, the median salary of full professors in physics is around $100k (depending on institution), but ONLY 10% of physics phd graduates actually become full professors, so strictly speaking, if you got a physics phd with the purpose of becoming a full professor, the median salary would be $0. If a social worker with a masters degree is pouring coffee, they're likely a data point on the barista salary distribution and not the social worker salary distribution. Consider what the median salary of an actor is!

thrifty++
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by thrifty++ »

TopHatFox wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 9:33 am
Are people on this board generally opposed to entrepreneurship or graduate education?
I am generally not a big fan of extensive education. I think the actual costs and opportunity costs of it are not worth while. Not on a financial basis anyway. I think the most efficient way to accumulate skills is to get paid while accumulating them, on the job skills and/or an employer paying for your courses, the second best being learning them for free and the worst being paying for them yourself. If you really must pay for them yourself I think it is best to do a short, practical and specific course of study which will provide you with skills which are immediately in demand.

Entrepreneuship is definitely appealing. I want to segue into it at some point because I think that is where you can find greater income and tax minimisation and freedom and ironically less risk.

I would recommend watching this video of Cal Newport on Finding Your Passion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIMu1PGbG-0. I get the sense you might be getting a bit concerned about finding your theoretical passion. I have seen your posts trying to make a decision about which jobs to take etc. Any job that you take will not be permanent. You seem very smart and it is likely that any job you take, especially at the lower level, would just be a way to start seguing on to other things which are more suited to you and you will probably only find what is suitable to you by exploring and doing, rather than theorising.

Clarice
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by Clarice »

TopHatFox, I would like to share with you a few points wrt social work in a healthcare system where I've been interacting with social workers for many years:
1. Your job is not "helping people". Your job is serving an institution. It is a very rare joy to actually help someone as a social worker.
2. A job of a social worker in a medical setting is somewhat analogous to a bouncer at a bar. A person gets into a hospital. The hospital extracts all the money from this person and kicks him out. Most of the time it goes smoothly. Sometimes it doesn't (e.g., a boyfriend of 20 years disappears faster than you can say, "a moderate assistance is required with simple activities of daily living"; the parents refuse to take their 20-year-old son dying from cancer home, a wife of a suddenly quadriplegic man files for divorce and rents a room in the house to her new boyfriend, etc). That's where a social worker comes in. The job of a social worker is to get rid of this person very fast while documenting a "safe discharge". Often, it amounts to getting this poor soul to a dump of a Board & Care while charming him into compliance.
3. You will have a lot of paperwork, which you'll write very carefully in case it has to serve as your alibi.
4. You will not like most of the people you deal with. They will be demanding, ungrateful, and void of the capacity to think.
5. You will be a part of a healthcare racket.
I also interacted with social workers while working in educational system many years ago. They were mostly extroverted women who exuded warmth and concern while being busybodies.
That's about it. Good Luck!

steelerfan
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by steelerfan »

My mother in law is still working at age 84 with a MSW. She was a director at county Mental Health District. She made decent money but probably not as much as you think. She retired many years ago but does her current gig for the 100 percent travel and to "give back". Her job is all paperwork. As a social worker she worker for child protective services and rescued kids that were in a bad situation. Once she had a guy pull a gun and blow his brains out in front of her. I think there are people that are natural caregivers but it is a calling. If you are truly wanting to help people have you considered getting a job in hospice? I don't know but they might train the right person to be a counselor. Another idea would be a funeral plan salesman. Caring and the opportunity to make $$$.

OTCW
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by OTCW »

I know a few social workers in the local school system. Good people that work very hard, see a lot of awful stuff, and don't get paid very much. They do like their jobs, get decent benefits, and the bonus of time off around the school schedule.

EdithKeeler
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by EdithKeeler »

I know several people with MSWs. With the exception of one, they don’t make anywhere close to 60k. Two drive Ubers on the weekend to help pay off student loans from grad school.

I’ve read several of your posts about your job situation. Personally, I think that you’re way too focused on finding the perfect job that lines up with your Myers Briggs type. Life very seldom falls into neat little boxes, though it would be nice if it did.

To me, it sounds like you’re in the perfect spot to just try some stuff. My advice: get a job and commit to sticking with it for a year and doing your best. Meet new people. Try some different things on the job. Volunteer for projects and groups at work that seem interesting. As you do them, pay close attention to what you like and dislike about each experience. Maybe even take on a part time job on the side and do the same thing. Or volunteer work. Commit to it like a science experiment. At the end of the year you should have some valuable data. I like these things, i hate those things. These are the tasks I enjoy, these are the kinds of people I like working with, these are the ones I don’t. At the end of the year, you’ll have information, contacts, a solid section or two on your resume, a little cash, and a better idea of what you might really want to do, whether it’s a different place to work, a different kind of job, or going back to school.

I know a lot of people who floundered around the first couple years after graduation, then went to law school or similar, then realized they hated being lawyers. A friend’s kid just graduated from pharmacy school with 160k in debt and only now discovered she hates being a pharmacist. She’d never even worked on a pharmacy (actually probably never even picked up a prescription!!) before enrolling in grad school.

Right now—to me—your posts remind me of a pinball machine, and you’re the ball, bouncing from one idea to another but not spending much time on anything.

I don’t mean this to sound harsh—I say this because you remind me a whole lot of myself my first few years out of college, armed with a Literature degree from a prestigious college with mo clue about work. In retrospect, I wish someone had given me that advice.

TopHatFox
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by TopHatFox »

Yeah, I agree about the pinball. That's certainly what it feels like. I did interview at a place that's likely to give me an offer. I'll just do that and save some $/take notes for a year.

Beats jumping from thing to thing, or off a bridge!~

blackbird
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by blackbird »

It appears that others have already provided enough input to give you a legitimate reason to pause on this idea, but I feel compelled to share my experience here as reinforcement.

For about three years I worked at a regional government office that provided various support services for a large geographic area. My area was in planning but I shared a building with several efforts that could collectively be lumped under the heading of "Aging". This area had one senior manager, two mid-tier managers, and about 20 social workers. Each social worker had an extensive list of elderly and/or disabled citizens who they provided a range of support services. These included coordinating Meals-on-Wheels, managing social security/disability/medicare/medicaid services, site visits to evaluate home care services, etc etc.

Each morning the social workers would come in, get their case lists for the day, and use a government car to travel to visits. This frequently entailed arriving before the rest of the staff (ranging between 7 am and 8 am), and returning after the staff had left for the day (sometimes as late as 6 pm to 7 pm). I occasionally had to be at work late for a Board meeting. These provided catered meals to local officials (County Commissioners, Mayors, etc). Many, many times I witnessed a social worker returning to the office from case visits just as our meetings started (7 pm), and the SW scrambled to get whatever leftovers were available so that they could eat while completing their regulatory documentation from the visits.

I finally asked a coworker who had been in my section for 10 years how much they got paid, since they were worked like dogs and always seemed to be racing to catch up. In 2008 dollars, their salary was less than $24,000. These are people who held Master's degrees in social work fields. More than once one of them told me about catching fleas at house visits, or having to report to police about home issues.

I applaud the desire to help people, and it is a service that is clearly needed in many demographic groups. But please be aware of the personal costs that work will exact. Financially, temporally, and personally, in all cases the toll will be high.

Good luck to you.

tradfgh
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by tradfgh »

Hello
I did about 4-5 years of IT support of a non-profit (99% county funded), and a couple different counties "health and human services department" (this is the best possible place for a Social worker to work) in a high COL county in California.

I cant stress the fact that 98% were women, 100% unionized, and they really didn't do much work...
Different counties stress different "support services" differently, in Bay Area-Burb, it was about 900 workers in the department. I can't stress the fact that inefficiency and lack of giving a crap about costs, efficacy or results. In a rural county of coastal California they had 1500 workers, 1% of the county was working for the freaking welfare department!

Frankly if you get your MSW you should just get your LCSW (2 years unpaid apprenticeship) then the county can bill the state more for when you talk to homeless people in locked-in mental health unit, who they bill California state for over $1300 a day.

Basically... social workers are just county union mafia, in the bay area.

They make 100k-150k benefits a year (transparent California) if you don't believe me, but the jobs are very hard to get.

I have seen the county hire girls that didn't have their MSW, and they would just get their Marriage family therapy license, which is a much easier license to get and satisfies the union requirements of the job, but only get this useless license, if the supervisor tells you that you got the job.

Don't let the Senior Social Worker title fool you... 100% of our social workers are senior social workers!

https://www.jobaps.com/SCRUZ/sup/bulpre ... =SM8&R3=CC

Rouva
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Re: Master's in Social Work?

Post by Rouva »

I did Master's in Social Work three years ago as my second degree. I'm not located in US, but I thought I could say a few words about the nature of the job. I've worked in psychiatric wards, adult services and child services, disability services and at school.

If it's about money, you can get the same salary easier from some other job. On good days, when there is progress in the client's situation, social work is wonderful. On bad days, it's utterly frustrating and you'd want to scream because nothing happens / there are no resources / there is no time / you can't get along with the client. It's hard to watch people make stupid choices after stupid choices, and listen their family shouting at me, but there is nothing we can do to stop him because he's an adult.

There is a lot of emotional baggage. I'm not an extrovert, or emotional person. Still, I find myself somewhat attached to my long-term clients. It's hard to focus on someone and his life for months / years and not to worry what happened after we parted ways. First time a client threated to kill me, I had been working four months at social worker. My address and contact details are secret, and I have a different surname than my children because we live in low cost area with at least six of my former clients within one km radius. I've had school friends tell me how a client appeared at their door with a torch and tried to put their house in fire. That social worker lived in different municipality than the one where she worked at. Distance doesn't matter if someone has set their mind on finding you. The problem is acknowledged, but the employers don't do anything about it.

Maintaining emotional distance is necessary. It's not easy to dwell all day on all the dark, nasty stuff which happens to people (after starting social work, I no longer think the dramatic plot twists in soap operas are unrealistic) and go home and put a smile on your face when you greet the family. There is an increased demand for time to unwind. My best trick for that was to spend two hours each Friday evening playing a Sith in MMO. All that slashing and mindless button smashing helped.

I chose social work because there is a shortage of licensed workers in my country, and I needed a guaranteed job. After 2,5 years I moved to administration, and I don't plan ever going back to client work. I could not do social work for thirty years.

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