My Experience in the MSW Penn Aging Concentration (PAC) by Lizza Robb, MSW 2012

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