Career Day

I didn’t prepare anything for career day at Ottawa High School. I was asked so long ago, and it snuck up on me. I just went to the high school after yoga and went with the flow.

I was greeted at the front door by a group of students in blue tee shirts that said “Mentor” on the front. As the young woman assigned to me walked me up to the teacher’s lounge on the 900 floor I asked her what mentors do.

“Well, we’re all upper classmen, a few sophomores but mostly Juniors and Seniors. We’re assigned to go to freshman homerooms regularly to see if any of the freshmen have questions or problems we can help them with. There’s stuff they will ask kids that they won’t ask teachers or counselors, or even their classmates. They gave us some OK training. We try to come off as safe and non judgmental. It works pretty well.”

“What do they ask you mostly?”

“Mostly how to find their next class. They really ask us a lot of stuff the first few weeks. After that it slows down. But sometimes a kid will ask us something really important.”

“I see.”

“Are you here to do the Social Work and Psychology presentation?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s our biggest seminar. It got the biggest response from the freshmen. We had to move it to the auditorium.”

“Freshmen?”

“Yeah, didn’t Mr. Gross tell you? This is all for freshmen. It’s part of the freshmen academy.”

“How many?”

“Over seventy.”

In the lounge I saw all kinds of people from town. A local chiropractor came in with a model of a spine. My optometrist was there. A local judge, an attorney, the young guy who owns a local gas station/towing company, you name it. As far as careers go, they had a lot of them covered. I don’t suppose many people turned down requests to come talk to high school kids about their occupation. Who doesn’t want to help kids?

I was teamed up with Kevin Gallagher, a school psychologist who serves a number of small rural school districts north of Ottawa. We were given the task of filling a regular school period, fifty minutes, talking and answering questions about what we do (did in my case) in our profession.

As we walked into the auditorium I asked Kevin “did you prepare anything?”

“Not really. Did you see those questions they suggested we consider?”

“If I did I forgot them.”

“I’ve got an extra set. Here.” I read them over. That helped.

Twenty five kids or so gathered slowly in the auditorium. I guess my guide had been wrong about the number signed up. The teacher assigned to help us first moved them into the first three rows center of the auditorium where we faced them from the stage. Behind us was a giant screen with a laptop and a projector on and running. I guess some people brought power point presentations. Kevin and I ignored it. The teacher took attendance. We were on.

Freshmen are thirteen or fourteen years old. As I looked at the row of young faces I was struck at how my life continues to make loops. Forty two years ago I was a 22 year old first year teacher at Ottawa High school given task of teaching English to 125 such freshman. Five classes of freshmen English: grammar, short stories, poetry, Romeo and Juliet/West Side story, Flowers for Algernon, The Outsiders (for my remedial class), a writing assignment every week. It was a struggle. I did it exactly one year and never returned to full time teaching. And here I was back, them looking up at me on the stage expectantly, waiting to hear what I could bring to add to their lives. I’d gone full circle. Me, pushing 64 with a gray beard, but them just the same; naïve, hopeful, expectant.

Maybe more sophisticated. I thought how young they were to be considering careers. Who knows what I was thinking when I was thirteen? I certainly don’t. But I don’t recall thinking seriously about work, or salary, or career until, oh, about 30. I realize that probably is not the norm.

We began by explaining why and how we chose the careers we did, in psychology and social work. Kevin’s story was fairly linear, some exposure in high school, major in psychology, on to graduate school, choosing a school psychologist track, a year’s internship, a job. Some of the kids took notes.

My path to social work was crooked. I studied English because I loved English and not knowing what English majors did other than become journalists or teachers, I worked toward a teaching certificate. I did my student teaching in Ottawa. I thought was difficult but the school people said I did well, and that summer hired me. At the end of that year I found myself standing in the hall by the lockers after the second bell rang not wanting to go into class. I never taught full time again.

I traveled, quit my job, lived cheaply, worked in a lumber yard, a dairy farm, substitute taught, worked in a hostel, was the rod man on a surveying crew, walked dogs, taught PE in a Detention home, taught homebound students, worked in a nursing home, worked for DCFS on an hourly basis, and found myself at YSB. I learned social work by doing it rather than being schooled in it. I explained carefully to the kids that is no longer how it works.

I also tried to explain what was needed to be a good social worker: the ability to suspend judgment, understand value systems not your own, think on your feet, hear what people are saying, control your emotions, separate your life from your job, write well. Write well?

They didn’t understand that. I explained the importance of court reports to decision makers who will, on the strength or weakness of a written report or evaluation, make major life decisions for children and families. I explained case notes. I explained how boiling down complex problems in writing contributed to the ability explain them verbally. That it’s not just the act of writing well, but thinking clearly that sets good social workers up for the task of explaining important points in meetings, in court testimony, in heartfelt conversations with emotional people. Kevin told a similar story regarding psychological reports and assessments.

They asked a lot of questions about salary and liked Kevin’s answers better than mine. It is nearly impossible to convert a bachelor’s in psychology into a lucrative occupation, but social workers with bachelor’s degrees are in high demand. Low salary, but high demand. And then I encouraged them to go on, after working with a four year degree, to get a Master’s degree and really contribute to social work as a field, developing new program approaches, supervising new workers, running organizations in a humane way. It seems ironic to explain that the social workers that make the most money no longer have a caseload, but that’s true, so I told them that, along with the disparate and seemingly unrelated duties administrators take on: conflict resolution among staff, money management, fund raising, policy formation, building maintenance. Their eyes began to glaze over.

I told them that I, the English major, found myself eventually managing a $6 Million dollar budget and calling my wife, a math major, while working late my first year asking her how to carry out math functions on a calculator so I could do my job. The English major who flaunted math found himself humbled by the need for it. The message Kevin and I tried to drive home was that although it may seem possible to specialize and ignore other fields of study the smart move is to get as broad and as deep an education as possible because you will most likely need it whether you know it or not. That it is not just the specific knowledge you gain in college, which can go out of date, but the personal skills you develop while in college, working with others, researching, communicating your views that are of equal importance.

A young woman raised her hand and asked me “Is social work emotional?”

I paused and told her “It is emotional as hell. I’m glad you brought that up. If social workers do not have well balanced lives, interests outside of work, good ways to deal with stress, the work will either burn them out or drive them out.”

I gave as an example the period we went through in the 80’s when familial sexual abuse and sexual abuse of all kinds became acceptable to talk about. The lid came off a societal taboo and we were there to pick up the pieces. The resulting trauma to social workers hearing the stories of children disclosing sexual abuse at the hands of family members was too much for many. We had to be retrained, sensitized, and armed with new tools to take on the task of helping those kids put their lives and their families back together. That kind of prolonged exposure to problems, coupled with confidentiality requirements that make our normal support systems unusable, create great stress on social workers. They should know that going in.

And both of us found ourselves saying the same thing-you are not always thanked for the work you do but if you can develop the ability to realize your own successes, and value them, you will find social work wildly rewarding.

After the session a young woman came up to the stage and looking around, spoke softly to me. Do you remember me? I’m Donna Blackwell (not her real name).”

“No I don’t. Have I met you before Donna?”

“Yes you have. You met me at my Mom’s funeral.”

“And who was your mother?” She gave me her mother’s name. My mind flashed to a little girl in a freshly ironed dress. Her mother had died of a heroin overdose while her children were in YSB foster care program. They were adopted by our agency.

“How are things going for you Donna?”

“Very well. Thank you. I;'m doing well in school and everything is good at home. I just wanted to thank you for what you and YSB did for my family.”

“You’re welcome. Do you want to be a social worker Donna?”

“Yes. More than anything.”

“Well good luck to you.”

As she walked away I walked over to Kevin, shook his hand, and thanked him for being my partner in the presentation. He looked at me funny.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“I don’t think so. We’ve got two more of these to do.”

That explained the low number of students in the auditorium. I’ve got to start reading the attachments to Matt’s e mails. We talked to two more groups of 25 freshmen. It was a three hour gig. And there really was great interest in the helping professions.

At the end of the day I got a haircut. The young woman (isn’t almost everyone young when you’re over 60?) who cut my hair has three kids 9,7, and 5. I was telling her how surprised I was at the interest in social work and psychology.

“That doesn’t surprise me at all. I think kids know more now, and they want to do something to make things better. All this bullying? Violence? And racial tension? I think young kids are going to be the ones to really impact those problems. They think it’s crazy. And it is. I think they’re going to change things.”

We can only hope so. Don’t discourage young people who want to help others because the pay is bad and the work tough. We need them in those fields now more than ever.