First Post: My WriteHere Experience with Medium
I have a bunch of saved drafts in my Medium account but I never had the courage to hit publish. Who would care? Why am I writing personal essays? I decided to participate in Medium Write Here workshop, where each week until March 31, we sign onto Zoom with Amy Shearn and Harris Sockel, and 30+ other writer strangers, listen to calming background music and just write. You can write about whatever or choose a helpful prompt that Amy posts at the beginning of the week. I decided to participate this week and here is what I wrote:
Career Path
Are you sure you want to be a social worker? They have the highest burnout rates with low pay. Says every mentor I have met with. They mean well, or at least they think they mean well, but their cast of fear is creating doubts in my own mind.
I am nearing the end of applying to two Master of Social Work programs, and while I am in the process of the admissions decision, I am already doubting this career choice is right for me.
When I was in undergrad, I declared sociology as my major and thought the most logical career path was to be a social worker. I toured a local Department of Children and Family Services agency but did not get a good feel for the career path. I distinctly remember a dark cold meeting room with dingy long table and chairs. The professionals who met with several of us undergrad students were not particularly memorable or impactful in their presentation.
I joined the U.S. Foreign Service after graduating from university. I was immediately sent overseas and did not look back. From Israel to Vietnam, I learned lessons and gained experience no other job, with such prestige, could give me. I share with my mentors that I dream of leaving the foreign service and becoming a social worker, and the reaction is that I am giving up a job of a lifetime.
They’re not wrong, the foreign service is a privilege; like Emily said in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, “a million girls would kill for this job.” The truth is, my role in the foreign service does not align with my passion. The job is exciting, challenging, and demanding, at times, but I do not feel a sense of satisfaction. I often come home at the end of the day wondering, why am I here?
I have always had the itch for researching new opportunities. When I was a young girl, my family often left me home alone. That’s right DCFS friends — immigrant families sometime leave their kids home alone. I was around 8–12 years of age, and my family would go somewhere during the day, I would just watch TV waiting for their return. Since we were poor, we had limited channels, so I would switch to the local listing channel that advertised the events happening in town. I would grab a pencil and paper, and write down all the interesting events I could go to, but who was I kidding? I would never have a chance to participate in small-town crafting events, my family was poor! But a kid could dream anyway, right?
When I got older, I would read the classified ads in the newspaper and circle every administrative or secretarial job I could find. I was just 15. At the library, I would find information leaflets with advertisements of local care agencies giving out free things. I would look for clothing drives or hygiene products, things my mom and grandparents could use. I did not know it then, but I had a knack for being a care manager when I had no clue the profession existed.
So, do I really want to be a social worker? I wrote in my graduate school personal statements that I seek to enter the field because of the injustices that happened to my mom in late 2021. Mom herniated (yet again) a disc in her spine. I was was working in Washington, DC, at the time, and upon hearing the news that mom injured herself, I frantically drove home to tend to her care. Driving my 56 going on 80-year-old mother to see doctor after doctor pained me. To get her to take shuffling steps to the wheelchair was excruciating. Helping her walk into the examination office shattered my soul. Getting mom no more than 100 feet room to room, she had to prop her body onto my back while we shimmied forward together.
I am soon becoming a mom, and I envision carrying my son on my back in his toddler years as we play throughout his childhood. I can’t imagine in my geriatric years, having to cling on my son’s back due to ailments. I once saw a meme on aging, from birth to death, a mother and child carrying each other through stages of life. The child’s life begins in his mother’s arms and as the wheel of aging goes, the child eventually grows to adulthood and carries the mother on his shoulders, like the samsara or wheel of life. I think that is why I should go into social work. That experience of caring for my mom through her ailments and my continued care for mom and my grandparents drew my heart into the work of helping others.
But I cannot get the thought out of my mind — what if my mentors are right? That burnout and compassion fatigue is real in social work. I have some more exploration to do but as of right now, it is full steam ahead as a social work student.
