Community Psychology Major 2022
Graduate Application for UW School of Social Work
The experiences that have influenced and motivated me to obtain a master’s in social work are from personal life experiences, my employment, and from my journey as a student at UW Bothell. First, my personal experiences are from experiencing homelessness, addiction, and domestic violence. I started using drugs at the age of thirteen. It was the only coping mechanism I learned as a child. I grew up in poverty, chaos, and I was never taught the importance of a college degree. All this led to me losing everything and ending up homeless. I never pictured myself getting to that point but being in an abusive relationship was a huge contributing factor to getting to the lowest point of my life. When I lost all hope, and accepted my life as it was, I met a social worker who offered me treatment. It was a way out. That social worker worked with me during my first year of my recovery. I know that I am where I am today because of the care and compassion she gave me. She made me feel human. I want to give this same experience to so many others.
Currently, I am a full-time case manager for Pathways of Hope. I am the first case manager for this program because it is relatively new. I have created an implementation plan, and I have established community partnerships with other organizations in Snohomish County. I was told by my boss, and the person that oversees all the counties in the Northwest division that I have the most successful Pathways of Hope program. I was asked to give a presentation to other counties to show what I have been doing. Through this job, I have learned leadership skills, and how to work as a team. I have strong professional relationships with my clients. I have learned how to navigate through community resources, and I am able to provide each of my clients with available resources. I will be able to use these skills in my career as a social worker.
During my time at UW Bothell, I was able to collaborate with my peers. I know that there is a lot of collaboration work that I will be doing in the school of social work, and as a social worker, so I feel that I am prepared from the work I do in my employment, and the work I have done as a college student. In summer quarter at UW Bothell, I took BIS 255, Critical diversity. I worked with Megan Thorsrud, Claire O'Donnell, and Nigel Anders on a group project about The Sentencing Project. The Sentencing Project promotes responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice. This relates to social work because the focus is social justice. The judicial system disproportionately incarcerates people of color, police brutality is high, and the US has one of the highest rates of incarceration.
When I was working on my transfer degree, I was able to do an undergraduate project for a women’s studies class that I took in 2019. My undergrad project was called, “Empowering Women From The Classroom to the Community.” I collaborated with my professor, my peers, and an outside organization. I picked a non-profit organization that I have worked with for almost 5 years. This relates to my future career goal in becoming a social worker because I was able to make community connections by connecting my classmates with people in the community to do volunteer work with a non-profit organization. As a group, we made a meal and served lunch to women that were at the day center. I also gained experience in leadership by organizing a day of volunteer work.
Another paper that I wrote, “Why Funding for Homelessness Matters,” in Winter quarter 2021, I was able to deepen my understanding of different research approaches. Some of the research approaches I learned were text-based analysis, interviewing, mapping, and observation. For this assignment I focused on the homeless crisis we have in the US. This assignment gave me new insight on some of the issues surrounding homelessness. For example, during my research for this assignment I learned that hostile architecture, which is an urban-design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully keep homeless people from loitering in front of business. As a social worker, I will be working closely with the homeless population, so the topic of this paper gave me more motivation to work towards social change in Snohomish County.
My personal experience, my place of employment, and my time as a college student have all contributed to me pursuing a career as a social worker. I know that becoming a student for the School of Social work would turn my dream into a reality.