Social Work as a Profession: No Way to Get a Man

Being a social worker is exhausting.




Well, that statement was going to be the entire blog, because, honestly, I don't really have the energy to compose much more text at this point in my day. It is nearly 8pm, and I am ready to climb into bed. How do social workers ever manage to get married? When is there time to date? Well, okay. If I really examine my schedule, I see that I do have some time on Saturday mornings, around 11am. (But not this Saturday because I am volunteering at the food bank with the Young Dems.) All other times, I am either booked up with appointments and meetings or my brain is completely fried from inane incidents with clients, or, even worse, other social service professionals. The only men I meet at work are birth fathers (who are in the process of pulling together their lives to regain custody of their children), foster dads (who generally have a co-parent already), or other equally stressed-out social workers. In the past, I have considered doing my social work job in a half-ass manner so that I can reserve my precious energy for man-hunting/dating. But you see, the idea of doing the job in a half-ass manner is pretty incongruent with the profession itself. I don't know if you were aware of this, but social workers don't really get paid very much money. Instead of monetary compensation, social workers are compensated by the satisfaction of doing good work (at least, this is what they tell us in grad school when they give us our student loans, which won't be paid off until we are 50). Ultimately, if you decide to do half-ass work AND you aren't getting paid very much money, then there's really no reason to be a social worker (even if you do have increased energy for man hunting.) So, I will push forward in the pursuit of satisfying good work, and I will hope that one of these days, while en-route to a Team Decision Making Meeting, I run into a handsome, liberal man whose multi-million dollar renewable energy corporation is installing solar panels into the county offices.

Hey, even social workers are allowed to dream.