No mi pequeña vida

Woohoo! I am done! Just performed my last commencement exercises...forever. Maybe. In any case, I feel like I'm on cloud nine. That I really did accomplish something in going to grad school. Lots of love for everyone. I'm posting the speech I made. It was straight from the heart. Mine to yours.

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I admit that when I first started this program, I had only a foggy idea of what social work was. I entered school with a vague notion that working with people was the most salient of pursuits. Noble cause, helping people. I came to school thinking I would learn how to do just that. Be a social worker.

I still remember hearing to my dismay, early in the start of our program, from Bart Grossman’s class that an Abraham Flexner had announced to a conference of social workers that social work was not a profession, but rather a handmaiden to real professions like medicine or education. Do you remember that class? That social work lacked a technique that could be taught through an educational process. It assumes that the solution to social ills is a path paved with good intentions. So to make the world a better place is a nice sentiment but does not a profession make.

I remember hearing that and having a sinking feeling in my stomach. What if that’s true? What if I just dedicated two years of my life to something that anyone with a feel-good desire to help people can do? What is social work anyway?

And now perhaps I have backed myself into a corner, because I have to give you an answer of what social work is, and if we learned how to be social workers in these past two years of school. I’ll offer you what I think it is, from my interactions and observations of you, my fellow classmates, and the classes and instruction I’ve had with our school’s faculty, and most of all my understanding from doing the work itself.

Social work is a profession. We are all receiving a piece of paper today that tells us so. But it is something more than that.

It is a belief in people, in the realization and active pursuit of the humanity that we see in others. A frame of understanding that we share citizenship with our clients, neighbors, classmates, teachers, and friends.

This is not work for the faint of heart. We seek out the socially forgotten and purposely overlooked. Not because we have any privilege that obligates this, but because human perfection is a myth. We all share the same capacity for success that we do for failure.

It is not a vain pursuit, that social workers change the world. We have no other choice. The good that we see in others is a good that we see in ourselves.

Sure, we are people in our environments, subject to the fixed inequalities and injustices of our society, but those mezzo and macro circles that press upon us are changed by our wills and beliefs in a world that can change.

In that 1915 conference speech, that self-same Flexner admitted “Social work appeals strongly to the humanitarian and spiritual element. It holds out no inducement to the worldly—neither comfort, glory, nor money. The unselfish devotion of those who have chosen to give themselves to making the world a fitter place to live in can fill social work with the professional spirit.”

This spirit is something professional, something lyrical. Many of you were practicing social work before you came to graduate school. We all know that you don’t need an MSW to do a lot of the work we do. And we’re going to learn most of our practice skills by being out in the workforce anyway. But these concentrated two years together have given me, at least, a sense of that which we all share as social workers.

Before I conclude, I want to say that the reason I wanted to do this speech in the first place was to be able to express to my fellow classmates what an honor and pleasure it has been to complete this program with you. It has been a pleasure.

I’ll leave you with a poem I found it in a collection of love poems, which strikes me as fitting the more I think about it. When I read it, it captured for me what we are as social workers, what we do, and a way of being that I hope we will carry with us. And I hope it captures that for you.

Las Vidas

escrito por Pablo Neruda

Ay qué incómoda a veces
te siento
conmigo, vencedor entre los hombres!

Porque no sabes
que conmigo vencieron
miles de rostros que no puedes ver,
miles de pies y pechos que macharon conmigo,
que no soy,
que no existo,
que sólo soy la frente de los que van conmigo,
que soy más fuerte
porque llevo en mí
no mi pequeña vida
sino todas las vidas,
y ando seguro hacia adelante
porque tengo mil ojos,
golpeo con peso de piedra
porque tengo mil manos
y mi voz se oye en las orillas
de todas las tierras
porque es la voz de todos
los que no hablaron,
de los que no cantaron
y cantan hoy con esta boca
que a ti te besa.


Lives

by Pablo Neruda

Ah how ill at ease sometimes
I feel you are
with me, victor among men!

Because you do not know
that with me were victorious
thousands of faces that you can not see,
thousands of feet and hearts that marched with me,
that I am not,
that I do not exist,
that I am only the front of those who go with me,
that I am stronger
because I bear in me
not my little life
but all the lives,
and i walk steadily forward
because I have a thousand eyes,
I strike with the weight of a rock
because I have a thousand hands
and my voice is heard on the shores
of all the lands
because it is the voice of all
those who did not speak,
of those who did not sing
and who sing today with this mouth
that kisses you.

Congratulations my friends and fellow social workers.

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I need to go to sleep because my sis, dad, and I will be driving back to Texas tomorrow. I can't help reflecting that I started this blog as a means of chronicling my experience as a MSW student and that has finally come to an end. The next post you read will have to do with life on the other side. Not as a student, but as a real, professional Sozialarbeiter! My mind is currently at a loss for profundity. Prost!

Here is Greenwood!

Graduate school is turning into a blur as I rush toward the end. The end is in sight. Must...make...it...to...Saturday... Today we had poster sessions for our research projects where we put up these display boards, very ala science fair. But it was splendid and it felt good to square one more thing away. Before the poster session there was an awards ceremony, which I skipped thinking it would not be any big deal to attend or not attend. Turns out I won the Greenwood-Emeritus Competence Writing Award for a paper I submitted! Crazy! People stopped me in the hall and told me and I thought they were all messing with me. I was given a nice framed certificate and $650. Wow! Its incredibly validating to know that my writing was recognized, as it has been a frustrating two years of producing papers that would only garner Bs and half-hearted A-s. So while I may not be any good at accurately answering my paper prompts or making assessments, I can write with some skill and flair. English degree, you were not a complete waste of 4 years. I'll leave you with the final paragraph from that paper

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Over the course of this school year I have sought a better understanding of the profession of social work, and I am starting to see that it is not a singular set of skills, experience, or even values. An MSW, or even LCSW, conveys an expertise that is still highly dependent on the individual practitioner. As such, it is up to the social workers to motivate themselves to be competent, knowledgeable, prepared, and eager in serving clients. I can do this.

On the crushing of testicles, God sayeth...

The Bible, illustrated with legos! So cute! All the great stories, like the seduction of Lot by his daughters, the genocide of Menonites and Philistines, all in plastic glory! A very fun flashback for someone like me, who attended Sunday school for way too long.