It took 13 years on staff at SP2 as a graphic designer to
realize that I was actually a social worker at heart.
In 2007, I was sent to photograph SP2 MSW students engaged
in post-Katrina recovery work as part of the Penn in the Gulf program, and
after four trips to Mississippi I realized I could no longer sit behind a
computer every day. The opportunity to witness and participate in meaningful
work with the victims of Hurricane Katrina stirred within me a purpose that had
lain dormant, and at the close of the project I told my supervisor, Mary
Mazzola, that I needed to do the MSW program. Her support then, and in the
three years that followed, was unwavering.
In May 2012 I walked with my graduating class and received
my master’s degree in social work with a certificate in gerontology. As a
Metlife Fellow in Aging through the Penn Aging Concentration (PAC), I was
provided a rare chance to pursue a clinical tract while focusing on issues of
policy and direct practice that impact older adults and their caregivers. The
specialized PAC trainings, coursework, and field education experience were an
excellent complement to the MSW curriculum and to my first-year internship on
the trauma service at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Just weeks before graduation, I faced a field practice
encounter that called upon the entirety of my education and experience. I had
spent the year interning as a counselor with home-bound older adults. My very
first client and I had been fortunate to work together consistently over that
period and we had developed a very strong therapeutic relationship. Over the
previous few months, my client’s health had declined rapidly, and it became
clear that she was nearing the end of her life. The tools I had gained at SP2
gave me the capacity and aptitude to engage with her in a forthright discussion
about her wishes, and we spent many hours talking about her feelings about
death and dying. I encouraged her to put her wishes in writing, but she never
had the chance.
The day came when I called my client to confirm our
appointment and her daughter answered. Learning that my client was in the ICU,
I went to the hospital and was introduced to the medical team who requested my
help in speaking with my client’s family about palliative care as further
medical intervention was deemed futile. My client’s family was distraught and
filled with uncertainty driven by the natural inclination to extend their loved
one’s life as long as possible. After meeting with the family to discuss my
client’s desire not to have her life artificially sustained, I participated in
a family meeting with the medical and hospice teams. Following that meeting, I
sat with my client’s family as they made the difficult decision to decline
further intervention and choose hospice care.
The next morning, I received a phone call from my client’s
son letting me know that his mother had passed away in the night. He said that
it had been a peaceful death. It had been the death that she wanted.
The memory of this experience stirs in me a sense of
gratitude and awareness that every single client interaction I have is infused
with the presence of the community in which I earned my MSW. The words of my
professors and classmates, the readings, the papers, the projects, the trainings,
the field education and supervision, even the support of my supervisor and dean
and colleagues who supported me while working and studying—when I act as a
social worker, I act for and with them all in solidarity with the school’s
vision for the passionate, just pursuit of social innovation, influence and
impact.
At a recent SP2 alumni event, I asked a longtime graduate
now working in human resources how she feels not to be working as a social
worker. With a smile she said, “Once you have your degree in social work,
everything you do, you do as a social worker.”
by Lizza Robb, MSW 2012
