Characteristics Of Social Work

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1. In addition to your personal desire to help people, why have you chosen social work as a profession over another profession or major? There are many reasons that I feel I have decided that social work is the correct major for me. My main influence in wanting to become a social worker is deeply personal. It stems from experiences I had as a child. I was placed into foster care when I was only 5 years old, and remained there until I was 7. Even though my time in the system wasn’t very long in comparison to other children, it had a lasting effect on me. I encountered many social workers within this 2-year span of time and not all of them left me with positive memories. They treated me as if I was just more paperwork for them to fill out.…show more content…
I am young, white, heterosexual, able-bodied individual and these characteristics give me a big advantage in the grand scheme of life. In addition to these characteristics, I am also a woman who comes from a poor, uneducated family and these characteristics give me a big disadvantage in the grand scheme. During my childhood, I was forced to cope with the fact that both of my parents, and a lot of my family were hardcore drug addicts. This was fairly well known throughout our immediate community. As a result of this, I was predisposed to the judgement of people that had never met me before, because of who my family was and what my last name is. Even as a child, if I was introduced to a police officer who knew someone else in my family, as soon as I stated my last name they would give me looks as if the actions of my family were ingrained into who I was as a person. Even though I can never relate to the immense prejudices that are faced by people of color, or LGBTQ+ individuals every single day in the large majority of our culture, I can feel empathetic towards being judged for something that is out of my control. I also recognize that because of the unfair advantages I was granted in life, I must use my voice to help propel these marginalized groups into the forefront in order to shed light on the need for…show more content…
I keep a close eye on politics and when a new bill is proposed that is clearly harmful, and directed towards already oppressed groups, I make it a point to contact my congressmen and let my voice be heard. I also use my voice, to the best of my ability, to personally educate individuals I interact with that may have harmful/bigoted views towards specific groups. I am especially passionate when it comes to individuals that are intellectually disabled. My current job allows me to directly work with Autistic individuals and I have witnessed the intense discrimination that they are subjected to. When I am forced into a situation where someone is being bigoted towards these individuals, it is my responsibility to speak up for them, as they are unable to do so for themselves. I try to calmly and effectively educate the bigoted person on why the individual I’m working with appears to act atypically. After graduating, when I am finally able to secure a job in the field or social work, I will be subjected to a lot more diversity. I will have the ability to not only continue with the current contributions I make towards social justice, but also expand the scope of groups I am personally educated on, thus allowing me to educate others as well. Something else that I want to become more involved in, that doesn’t

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