Hello! I'm Kess. This is my third attempt at blogging (third time's the charm?). I am a domestic violence advocate, turned research assistant, turned community program founder, turned special ed teacher, turned social worker. Though my resume seems like a crazy journey, overall I have stuck to my core career goals which are to use information, hard work, and authentic relationships to help the community. In my personal world, I'm super happily married to my fabulous engineer husband/ best friend/ life teammate/ personal chef. I love animals, particularly my two cats and two rabbits. I would love to add a dog and llama to the mix, but I definitely don't have time for either and I don't live on a farm so... no llama. My hobbies include obsessively watching RuPaul's Drag Race and everything related to it, various needlecrafts, reading, gardening, and organizing. But mostly I work. I am currently in an MSW/PhD program and also work in program development for my local Office of Children, Youth and Families.
Next week I start my first year of doctoral classes while I simultaneously finish up my MSW (this is my second time in the Master's program rodeo having already gotten an MAT), do my concentration field placement, work my graduate assistanceship, and do a bit of work for CYF on the side. So probably the last thing I need to do is start attempting to blog again. But here are some reasons why I'm going to try anyways:
1. I want to.
2. I frame myself as a radical feminist social worker/ person (but you work for the government!! and a sometimes super oppressive part of it!! (I know, we'll get to how I reconcile that in my head at a later point and why I think rad people sometimes should work for the man)), and I think that we need more voices like that in the world. So why not add to the flotsam and jetsam that is the internet when you think you have something good to say?
3. I am a fairly systematic and organized person who at this point is super experienced at juggling a lot of various work and personal projects and starting new things. And since I'm working through my second master's degree, the thing I'm best at is learning. Hopefully, sharing my process might help someone.
4. I know some pretty cool people and if this blog gets even 50 readers, maybe they'd want to share their ideas at some point too. I'd love to help their voices be heard even louder.
5. This is one way that I can start breaking down the ivory tower. I'll probably always have at least one foot, or possibly all four appendages, in academia. But I completely refuse to do so if my ideas just stay there. That breaks my core value of helping the community. So hopefully this blog will be one way to build a community where I can share these ideas and help other people help their communities in one big radical chain of helping.
So here are my goals to make this blog different than some of the other resources for graduate students and social workers that I've enjoyed and used online.
1. I am going to REALLY try to avoid whining about graduate school. Earning my doctorate has been a lifetime goal for me, and I am incredibly privileged to be in a position to do this. I am here for many reasons but definitely my unearned privilege as a white person raised by educated parents (who are also white and benefit from tons of unearned privilege). I am here because I'm married to a person who makes enough money to enable five years of working at less than my earning potential a difficult choice. I am here because I left direct practice where kids whined and rolled their eyes and required a ton of patience to help them learn (and I loved them for it) and left the really hard work to other people. I am here because a lot of people have helped and supported me. I'm here because I had access to some awesome opportunities. So yeah, grad school is going to be busy, and I'm going to work all the time. But I've always worked all the time, so that's not really new for me. What's different is that now I sit and drink coffee and work at my super cool desk and read and write interesting things and can pee whenever I want (which any teacher will tell you is one of the best things about not teaching). So I am lucky. I am extraordinarily privileged. And I am not going to whine about that on this blog.
2. There really isn't a lot of online info directly for social workers. I want more podcasts, blogs, and resources to enjoy. So I'm going to try to expand the resource base a bit.
3. There are few resources for feminist social workers online or anywhere. I am enjoying doing research on feminist social work and how we can change the way social workers experience their work using feminist strategies. I want to talk about that and provide as much information as I can because I strongly believe we need an ignited, educated, active feminist movement in America, particularly in historically women-dominated fields including social work and teaching.
Okay, so that's the plan. We'll see how it goes. It may die immediately, or it may help me share and collaborate my way through the next four years. So read if you want to, and I'll try to keep writing.
Cheers,
Kess
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