#masters of social work

[restforthe-burdenedsoul]

Debating if I’m meant for grad school or not.

I’m torn between “just keep pushing through despite the pain” and “take a break, get back in therapy, get your finances situated, get back on meds, get an adhd evaluation, and then go back”

I’m so close to finishing, but I’m back to having breakdowns every day. I spent most of yesterday crying.

And I think both are valid. However, there’s no Guarantee that life will be any less stressful a year from now. It could be worse. But I could also be more capable of handling it. Like, it’s still hard for me to believe that there are people in life who don’t have breakdowns over minor inconveniences. I felt like I was getting there and then i couldn’t afford therapy anymore and I couldn’t afford the medication appointments and they wouldn’t refill without an appointment. I had my adhd appointment scheduled and I just couldn’t afford it.

And maybe I’ve painted this green grass picture where I think things will be easier when my mental health is better and I’m able to focus better. Maybe it won’t be like that.

I really just need to talk to the school and see what options are even out there. It could totally not be an option to take a break. That would solve the internal battle.

I want to finish grad school. I don’t think I’d give up entirely. I took a break in undergrad too and still finished. I took a year and a half break, but never lost the vision. Grad school, my masters degree, that’s always been the goal.

Anyway. Props to parents who go through grad school. I can barely take care of myself and my dog.

[indianschool-blog1]

- ISDM, the school that offers the best Social Sector management course, explains how development management fuels social enterprises and social entrepreneurship.

[howdoyouexpressloneliness]

How do you express loneliness?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently writing my master’s thesis in social work on the topic of loneliness. After already having written a bachelor's thesis on loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown using a questionnaire as a research tool, my thesis supervisor and I came to the conclusion to stay on the same topic but handle it with a different approach.

Everyone has had experiences with loneliness in their life. No matter if they felt lonely themselves or heard about it, seen it on TV or read about it. Within my master’s thesis I want to explore the different ways people express loneliness. The research question of the master's thesis is therefore: "How do you express loneliness?".

My idea was to base the research on submissions. Within the submissions everything is possible, no matter if it is textual or written, artistic, videos, songs, photography or anything else that might help contextualize loneliness. (Examples could be: poems, texts, essays, haikus, lyrics, paintings, drawings, collages, videos, songs, photos etc.)

Please send your submissions to the Google Forms page created for this purpose: https://forms.gle/dF8xYQYz51ncUwSp9

Or to the e-mail: expressingloneliness@gmail.com

(If you’re German or can speak the language, please make sure to submit your work in German because that is the language the master’s thesis will be written in. But I am grateful for any and all submissions)

All submissions are confidential and will only be used for the purpose of research for my master’s thesis. All submissions are anonymous and any information to any personal information will be anonymized.

If you have any questions or suggestions please make sure to reach out to me! You can find me at the e-mail address: expressingloneliness@gmail.com or @howdoyouexpressloneliness on tumblr.com.

Thank you for participating!

[ad0rechuu]

MY FRIENDS AS CAKES; A THREAD. ━━ OBEY ME p1

prompts / plot. ━━━━━ mcs shenanigans on twitter as they assign cakes to their companions

*𖤐₊ ━━━━━ gn! reader x the obey me boys , two shot smau : crack / fluff (?) , staring: mc, lucifer, mammon, levi, satan, asmo, beel & belphie , rating: pg-13 , tw: mentions of food, swearing, death, all the fun stuff , notes: there are like no obey me smau fics so here u go! i always wanted to do one of these!! this my first post so please leave some comments or smth !

masterlist | part two

[cheeseburgersinparadise]

hello I submitted my last assignment and now I am done with school forever thank you

[shannonsketches]

like why did they change where Vegeta was when Cell announced the cell games in the anime

why did they make this vegeta starting shit with yamcha instead of chillin in the lab with his family? why did they take Bulma out of the lab? Why'd they say she was Out while Dr Brief was repairing 16? Why did they change Bulma working on advanced robotics to running in late with her baby?

it's the same scene except: - Bulma's actively at work being a scientist - Vegeta's not being rude to her (or anyone else!) - Vegeta waits for Trunks instead of leaving the room - Cell interrupted the airwaves, which means Trunks and Vegeta were just hanging out with Bulma and Dr B while they were working

Those are all Great Character Details!! That the anime rails against!!

[thegreatyin]

the adventures of the neath's most annoying definitely-totally-a-bat-and-not-the-scoundrel-in-a-robe continue (cards. their name is mr cards. or so they insist.)

this time: coworker antics. tune in next week on dragon ball Z where we'll be killing all of them with hammers

[quendiviner]

what's the universe of cynosure like?? the involved corporations etc, what do they do / what are they famous for, what's the level of technology like, how would you describe the universe's aesthetics? 👀

OUGHHH THANK U FOR ASKING HEHE <3

Cynosure happens in late 2200's and obviously the world has. well. changed a lot! But not that much and they even still have like, actual phones and some even still use wire headphones.

I think I said something about it being a soft scifi story with cyberpunk-ish vibes which kinda explains it? Well. The technology isn't that much different than ours due to some big problems Earth had to deal with first before getting back to making consumers suffer fulfilling individuals' needs. They have more cleaner energy now, and space travel, and stuff like that, yay! But the state of society has also started to go in a not-that-good direction, causing inequality to rise again little by little, while the power struggles have also caused the corporations to gain more control over what's happening in society and politics, which also makes them (maybe a bit too violent) rivals.

This turned out very...um...long. So I divided it into parts that are

Technology (+ side tracking to societal reasons)

What to expect if you were to live there

State of society in late 2200's

State of society in late 2200's but this time it's about corporations

Happy reading 🤍

Technology

Since I mentioned phones and all, I should probably start with technology JFBNGBFBFJFN UM. It has developed a lot, but the technical development (especially during mid 2000's - late 2100's period) have largely been concentrating on things that are more community/society related than on individual consumer items like phones and shit like that. One of the biggest breakthroughs was finding a specific mineral in space that functions like an extremely big solar panel and has thus advanced the clean energy sector. No one wants another climate catastrophe hahaha. ough.

The phone network is now everywhere, so there won't be a "oh no there's no signal in these woods" moments. or will there. and why is it so necessary anyway, hm 🤨 Public transport is thriving but so are the cars and bikes for some reason. Bikes and electric scooters have obligatory sound they make so people will get less driven over by them and vehicles will be less prone to not notice them and drive over them. No flying cars for consumers but ppl like paramedics and firefighters have helicopter-car combos that are 1) quick and 2) capable of carrying tons of stuff.

Another thing they've learned is quick space travel. Earth has many colonies in different parts of space, though some are actually ex-colonies (like Mars). This doesn't really show back on Earth in any way other than "hey my friend's friend's uncle's cousin's etc moved to x planet". Many people seem to want to move away bc there's this idea on Earth that the colonies are doing much better (they're not in most cases). People moving back to Earth is very rare and is viewed as, well, very weird.

Now, you may wonder why did I phrase the network part like that. Well! Like I kinda mentioned, there was a climate catastrophe. While people did manage to get to safety (some also just moved to the first colonies on other planets, either bc they wanted to or. well. bc they were chosen to 😬) and survive, what followed was chaos because of all the danger and new things that everything started bubbling over. Tons of crises at different parts of the world, and the inequality going sky high. A united planetary board was created, which then managed to allocate resources in a way that would calm the population and solve the problems. They made sure that from now on the budgets corporations and institutions get for their research will be based on how important their idea/innovation could be for the people, which then led to actually rebuilding the whole Earth society into something more united and more healthy.

One of the other things said board decided on, though, is the surveillance. Every person has a little device in a wrist (of non-dominant hand), containing their personal information, ability to pay, and also working as a small data disk. Peiple can choose what info they want to make public (for example, name and pronouns and stuff line that), and also share files with each other. While most opt to use their phones/tablets/laptops etc to confirm payment or see the data they have, later on people developed a modification that allows a small hologram of "screen view" to appear after a specific finger tap sequence. A small minority even manages to do their work stuff somehow... ANYWAY where was I. Right. That sounds somewhat easy, right? Yeah, well. The thing is, whenever you walk into some public building, the scanners at the door scan the device to identify who's inside or who left. It can also, in some situations (legally) be used to pinpoint a person's location when they, say, break a leg on a forest walk. I say legally bc while that was originally the idea, by the time Cynosure happens things are a bit different. :))

As for individual, consumer use related tech, companies started to pay attention to developing it again starting mid 2100's when things got much better again. Personal devices like computers and phones were made more durable due to the directives the Board had set, and also started to have even more powerful processors/graphics and larger amount pf data storage. Of course, most of these upgrades hit the markets much later after the institutions & corporations had them for years, partly bc solving world problems requires devices more stronger and powerful...

Cybernetics are not popular, but aren't rare either. They're expensive as hell and are mostly available through needs based programs (in which situation the government pays for the most of it). Most are health related, and other popular ones are more like devices that monitor person's health and medicine use etc. Health influencers are also big fans of these.

Later on (~early 2200's) some big corporations started to offer some special cybernetic implants for their workers, like hormone and medicine controllers to be more productive. Or things that will give advantages in *looks at notes* violent work encounters. Those are mostly offered to people who work a lot with other corporations or who have a higher risk of getting assasinated.

Unlike cybernetics, what actually are popular are new solutions to change certain parts of one's looks, like hair color, eye color and height (this one requires expensive cybernetic implants though :/). You can now have pink hair without going to the hairdresser every month.

Other things still seem almost same as nowadays, though there is more "smart" tech available. As in, the "your fridge knows you're running out of eggs and you planned to make an omelet for dinner. it has taken its liberty to order new pack of eggs. the grocery shop bot will be there in a moment."

OH THAT REMINDED ME! there are in fact robots and androids in there, most of them also used as some kind of employees. They're usually used at places with possible danger to humans, but some places have also started to use them as waitresses/baristas/customer service, alongside actual human workers. AI is highly regulated and it is illegal to make an actual, human-like intelligence paired with a very human-like body. G*ner*tive AI (censoring simply bc i don't want this to show up in search 🤪) is mostly forbidden, not counting occassional smarter chatbots.

There's also fun plasma guns and specific non-lethal weapons. People find a way how to make them lethal though.

What to expect if you were to live there

There are some things that are better! All education is now free (unless you want to/your parents make you go to some fancy university that thinks it's hotter than others) to make sure that people will have a lot of knowledge to have better chances at getting by in their life. The Earth Board has also made a directive of universal social security, additionally with some special needs based benefits. Cities/towns are walkable and mostly connected by public transport. Cities also tend to sprawl into big areas to make sure there aren't too many people living in the same area. There's also lots of parks and many trees and plants planted in the middle of the streets.

Despite the social security and knowledge, there's still inequality, and it started growing even more since early 2200's due to the local political power slowly sliding to big corporations. :/ They tend to pay more but also tend to choose people from more prestigious universities and schools, often also having preference on people's earlier careers. That leaves most people to work in smaller corporations or public institutions. While robots or androids do many blue collar jobs, some people also choose to work there, and their salary is very good due to the nature of such jobs.

Farming and overall agriculture has become popular, too, due to tech that makes it even more easier :)

While most of the climate catastrophe problems have been solved, there's no denying that weather has changed and became more extreme. Where Cynosure happens, it is a normal thing to have rainstorms at least twice a month, some very severe and often resulting in people having to stay at home. Summers are hot but quite humid, making them not so bearable. There's no "snowy winter" anymore, and many of those who's lived there since their birth have never seen snow in their life.

Pets are still allowed! But, well. You need to take a course of pet care practices to get a license to do that, mostly to prevent pet abuse, illegal/unethical pet adopting practices and easy spread of animal-borne illnesses.

Schools tend to have additional classes that teach children and teenagers about adult life (to make sure no one ends up not knowing how to do x bc their parents didn't/couldn't teach them etc). Many hobbies are made more accessible, though some parents still find a way to get their children into more expensive ones that require a lot of time and tend to be more professional...

Dealing with officials and bureaucracy has never been easier. Is it the fact that your personal info is always with you or is because customer experience is a number one priority for them? I don't know, man.

Health care is more accessible and doesn't cost a lot, but the "downside" is high progressive taxes. There's still enough money to live well though, most of the times. Big corporations tend to have better health insurances and thus their workers are able to get more higher quality med care than others. Some even have their in-house doctors. Some non-big corporate entities try to fix this by having their union give discounts on those for their members.

People tend to be more liberal about sexual & gender identities, partly because Earth doesn't want people to mass move to Mars bc of its more progressive views. HRT and surgeries are available, some corporate headhunters even try to get some young people come work for them by promising full coverage of those + paid leave for gettting better.

Alcohol and weed are available for sale to people over 18. Nightclubs and bars are popular, some streets being just full of them. Working for a corporation in a stressful environment? They might also prescribe you some other stuff if they think it would help productivity/worker's wellbeing. Public sector workers don't get that due to strong regulations.

Media is a big part of how people spend free time. There's tons of tv shows and movies, comics, books and video games. People also love talking about them. Fast food is also still a thing and all. The food is almost the same too hehe

um nothing more comes to my mind rn so. well. maybe i'll come back or y'all can ask abt something u want to know :]

State of society in late 2200's

Before I go into actual state I need to explain how government works probably? Like I already mentioned there's this United Planetary Board (aka the Board) that's made up of different specialists from different scientific fields who represent their own field for 2 years (chosen by scientists in their field and brings whatever said field comes up with on their own meetings). The Board's idea is to decide on the main points & directions for Earth's development and sometimes make up law directives which is probably the only practical thing they do that ppl should care about.

Then we have national governments that basically function in a night-watchmen state-like way to see that the laws work etc etc. They also make some specific laws sometimes that overrule local governments' decisions.

Local governments are more, well, local, and decide about things of a specific area. Due to their importance and heavy effect on basically whatever is going on in the territory, some big corporations have started getting their own representatives there, and also mayhaps pay the other representatives to support their ideas as well.

Like I mentioned before, despite all the social security/nordic welfare state stuff, inequality is starting to rise again bc some people just want more for themselves and manage to charismatically get into local governments., making social security services poorer and lowering taxes etc etc.

This then shows a bit in the crime rate. Crimes haven't been that visible for a century, but are now resurfacing back to the streets. Gangs and organized crime is also getting more and more foothold and starts to be visible. Some big corporations also tend to (unofficially) support some of them bc they help each other. Homicide rate is still a bit lower, but a somewhat big part of it happens between corporations or in corporations...........

Corporations in 2200's

Remember when in the beginning I said that the Board decided to fund those institutions and corporations that pay attention to Earth problems that need to be solved? Yeah, well. Bad idea in the long run.

This decision led to certain corporations becoming awfully big and power hungry, allowing them to throw their competitors off the market and also become incredible lobbyists.

Most of the big ones specialize in biotechnology, defense, pharma and energy, or a mix of those. There are smaller ones that hang out in such fields, too, but they're not that important. Public institutions also still do research but they're not as popular and often looked down upon as "less important".

Obviously back in mid 2000's the Board also made rules that help people see how exactly does a corporation spend money, but century and a half later most of the transparency has been lost and corporations are back on their secretive path. This also means that things like anonymous whistleblower channels are also often forgotten or not paid attention to in big corporations, or they're just not that anonymous. Lucky ones who manage to contact media to bring something up are often left with ruined career and barely any safety. Corporates have their own "investigations" for a few months if not years, and they mostly end in favor of the corporate or the worker who has more friends there.

I gotta admit I need to work more on corporations bc I only have one (1) planned out a bit. Will probably do some kind of intro for them later hehehe <3

[mueritos]

being in a social work masters program as a marginalized person who is ages ahead in theory and experience in comparison to your (white, privileged, rich) cohort is a fucking minefield. solidarity for all and every other marginalized person in these fucking micro aggressive and liberal ass social work programs.

[officialkendallroy]

gave my mom a super cunty short haircut SLAYYYY appointments for sabs salon now open !!!

[mostlikelytofangirl]

I love JC and W/W/X's mess primarily as platonic but I can't deny the eroticism of putting your organ in your bestie. XD

Some shippers have compared them to the couple from Wuthering Heights and while I never finished reading that so I can't comment, I can appreciate the gothic horror vibes.

-Regular Anon

Hi there, anon!

Oh, absolutely. Lol JC and WWX are a wonderful disaster whether as ship or platonic, and I very much appreciate every interpretation bc the amount of emotions and baggage there is off charts and I'm all for it!

Their tragedy is one of the most fascinating parts of the story imo bc of how rich and complex their dynamics are, I could read a book only about them :D

I'm gonna be honest with you chief, I have never willingly consumed anything related to Wuthering Heights ^^;. I know it's like an english classic or something, but I guess it's not that popular on my side of the globe :P, everything I know of it is from pop culture and tv parodies, so I can't comment on it either lol

[restforthe-burdenedsoul]

Just submitted my LAST assignment of my FIRST semester of grad school.

That feels pretty fucking amazing, especially after how tough this semester was!

Turns out, I can do hard things 😂

[aesrot]

actually fuck you all, i should start advocating for reader inserts more openly

[itsdespicablebre]

Okay update : I gave y’all three pics but y’all gonna have to go to my IG for the rest 🤷🏽‍♀️ IG:itsannab_

I still can’t believe I mastered it y’all😝😝😝😝

[ad0rechuu]

MY FRIENDS AS CAKES; A THREAD. ━━ OBEY ME p2

prompts / plot. ━━━━━ mcs shenanigans on twitter as they assign cakes to their companions

*𖤐₊ ━━━━━ gn! reader x purgatory hall + the demon lord castle , two shot smau : crack / fluff (?) , staring: mc, diavolo, barbatos, simeon, luke, solomon & the demon brothers, rating: pg-13 , tw: mentions of food, swearing, death, all the fun stuff, idk if luke’s technically counts as secreligious , notes: (solomon is younger than everyone but luke btw) i’m working on an ateez smau and a long form obey me series so enjoy this in the mean time ^_^ thank u for all the love on the previous part it was my first post so it’s been really lovely and overwhelming!! i’ll make a part three when the new character become official playables or i’ll just learn more about them because i’m only on lesson 60 !

masterlist | part one

[trans-axolotl2]

In my last residential treatment stay, I did have one psychiatrist who I trusted and had a positive relationship with. Her name was Dr. R, and when I came in on the first day of treatment and told her that I would not take any psych meds and that I had a lot of past psych trauma, she validated me and told me that she would not bring up meds unless I did. Throughout my stay there, she was empathetic, listened to my concerns, helped advocate for me, and generally made me feel heard. At the same time, when management took away our doors-she did nothing. When I needed to get a feeding tube--she lied to me about how long it would be in, and what I needed to do to get it out. She enforced policies about restricting outside breaks, restrictions on items, and contributed to treatment plans that my friends felt were unfair and damaging.

She was a good person and I liked her, but she was choosing to work within a system where she could not control the dozens of things happening there that harmed us every single day. This is what I mean when I say there is no such thing as a good psychiatrist in inpatient units--she was a progressive, validating, nice person --but her very job description made it impossible for a “good provider” to exist. To be a provider who wasn’t a part of the harm that was occurring on that unit, she would have had to quit, because the very requirements of her job required committing ethical violations, restricting peoples autonomy, and perpetrating iatrogenic harm. If she had stopped enforcing harmful policies and challenged her coworkers publically, she probably would have gotten fired. And that really is the problem--causing iatrogenic harm has essentially become a job requirement on inpatient units, and being a “good provider” by the metrics of the system require you to participate in that harm. 

I think Dr. R did a better job than most inpatient psychs in mitigating the harms she participated in, and finding ways to resist shitty systems when possible. I was glad she was there and I think she made my treatment better, but the two of us had a lot of conversations together where she acknowledged the fucked up things happening in the treatment center, acknowledged her role in them, and also stated that she did not have any power to change them. She could not fix the system by working within the system. 

I get a lot of questions by people who are interested in careers in the mental health system, and asking me on whether I think it’s okay for them to work there. My first response is usually if you’re asking because you’re feeling guilty after seeing what psych survivors say, I’m not someone who’s going to give you permission to ignore that guilt. The second thing I usually say is this: you need to go into this job aware with the fact that you will cause people harm, you will get into ethical dilemmas, and there will be times where you will either have to betray your personal values or quit. There isn’t one right answer on how to engage with mental healthcare as a provider, with the reality that until we build up alternative systems of care, the current structures still exist and have people who need support inside of them.  If that’s something that you think you can navigate in a way that lets you create the least harm possible, then that’s something you need to decide for yourself, and to think really deeply about if the reality of the psych system matches up with your goals.