-: I advocate for social work.
I'm obviously very biased, but I do think
that social work offers unique opportunity
for students going into the professional world
to have a lot of open doors,
whereas other fields might be a little bit more,
I don't know if narrow's the right term,
but maybe a little bit more focused.
Social work, I think,
opens the door for various opportunities.
I'm doing anti-trafficking work right now,
but if for some reason I decided to move
into hospital social work, I could do that,
or school social work.
There's obviously different certifications
and training you would want to have
in different areas, but I think social work
is kind of a unique space
where you get a lot of doors
that can be opened to you.
But find a group that's doing this work
that you wanna do.
If it's not already there,
do some research on areas
that you might be able to go to a meeting
or meet with somebody.
When I was a student,
before I got into grad school and things like that,
I just emailed a bunch of people that I found online
that were doing anti-trafficking programs.
I just said, hey, I'm doing a research project
through my college.
Can I interview you?
All of them said yes.
All of them were really gracious.
I've had students come to me and say,
hey, can I shadow you, that kind of thing.
I love that; I love that people are invested.
I think, just reach out.
Ask somebody if you can learn about the program,
volunteer if you can,
but just start getting your feet in the water.
I think, honestly, networking has been
the biggest help for me.
When I was at UT, I had a professor
that I worked with here that just literally
connected me to so many people and said,
hey, there's this thing going on.
You should go to it.
I think, just get connected to people
in your community,
or the community that you wanna work in,
'cause that's how, I think,
the phrase, it's not what you know,
it's who you know;
it sort of (laughs) still applies, I think,
in social work in a lot of ways.
Just get connected and start getting involved.