Hello Blog Community (in my best Good Morning Vietnam impersonation). My name is Roshawnda Washington but everyone calls me Ro and I’d like to take a few lines to introduce myself. I joined the MSAA team as an intern at the beginning of September and am so looking forward to working here. I’m currently working toward my MSW with the University of Southern California (Fight On!) after earning a bachelor’s degree in Biology. Why the switch you may ask…I was looking for something that would allow me to make a difference. About a year and a half ago I sat at work thinking that while I enjoy science and was working for a fantastic research institute I couldn’t see myself waking up in 10 years and still enjoying what I was doing. In typical Generation Y fashion I took to Google and typed in some of the words I was pretty sure I was looking for; people, help, professional, fulfilling, compassion, diverse and career. There were others like million dollars, international travel and fabulous but it took 6 seconds before I remembered that I’m not a reality TV star so my first few were probably good. Several things popped up and the one I almost immediately dismissed was Social Worker. “They’re the people who take children from homes and put them in other homes right”…Pass, that’s not for me and I continued on my search for my fabulous, million dollar (kidding) new path in life.

At work as I was speaking with some of our staff I expressed the new hunt for my future and someone mentioned, “you should look into social work”. I stopped and thought to myself, what are the odds. We began speaking about what Social Workers actually do, some of the areas where they are needed and specifically what the workers part was in our team at the hospital. I had previously had few occasions to interact with the Social Workers who partnered with our patient families and clinical teams. Getting to really speak with them I was able to learn that Social Workers are not the ‘baby snatchers’ or any of the negative stereotypes that many others and I had been associating with the vocation. Again I took to my trusty Google and in true predictive type mode it directed me to several programs offering an MSW and USC was at the top of the list.

Over the past year I have had the privilege of working with some wonderful professors and professionals as well as my fellow students to learn what being a Social Worker really is. I’ve been able to look at my parents’ history of being a foster family and the care that our worker put into each child she placed. In the VA workers who diligently and persistently advocate for veterans to make sure they are getting the services they need. In the awesome workers, who partner with families in hospitals to be the shoulder to lean on and the voice when they don’t know what to ask. I’ve learned that while many Social Workers do work with children and family services to make sure children are in caring and safe homes they also work in schools, therapist offices, businesses, corporations, hospitals, for counseling services and at non-profit organizations like here at MSAA (as well as a ton of places it would take a dozen blogs for me to list). Social Workers are professional, diverse, compassionate people who seek to help others fulfill needs and they do all this and more as a career (like how I used all my search words 😀 ). I will probably never make a million dollars, my international travel will be on vacations (unless I become that TV star) but I think that Social Workers are pretty fabulous and I’m beyond excited to get started on this path and see the difference I’m able to make.