Stepping Into Specialization: The Master of Social Work (Specialist Year)
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Description
In this episode of the Connecting With Care podcast, we explore the journey of Hallie Moffitt, a second-year MSW student at Baylor University, who shares her experiences in social work specialization. Hallie discusses the importance of hands-on internships, her work providing therapeutic services in schools, and the challenges faced by students. Her insights on balancing coursework with personal life and her aspirations for the future make this episode a valuable listen for anyone interested in social work. Tune in for inspiration and advice on navigating the path to meaningful impact in the field.
Transcript
SPEAKERS: Lillie Walker, Hallie Moffitt
Lillie Walker
Welcome to the Connecting with Care podcast. My name is Lillie Walker. What does it feel like to step confidently into your social work specialization? In this episode, we look at how the Specialist year deepens skills, sharpens vision, and prepares students for advanced practice. Join us as we sit down with Hallie Moffitt to explore the MSW specialist experience. Hello, listeners. Thanks for checking this out. Today I'm here with my friend, roommate and classmate, Hallie Moffitt. We’re talking about stepping into specialization, and specifically Advanced year and clinical and all the things. So, to get us started, Hallie, I'd love for you to introduce yourself. tell us about your hometown program, progress, all the things.
Hallie Moffitt
Hi, guys. My name is Hallie. I'm from a small town in Minnesota. I am in the second year of my MSW here. I did the two-year program, so I'm in my second year doing the Advanced track Clinical focus and I have one more semester left.
Lillie Walker
Woohoo! We're nearing the end; we're rounding the corner. Can you tell us about your undergrad experience?
Hallie Moffitt
Yeah, So I got an undergrad degree in psychology, counseling because I wanted to be a counselor and a therapist, and that's something that I still do want to do. But my senior year of college, I had a lot of spare time and so I ended up volunteering at a group home in the town that I was going to college in. And my volunteering turned into an internship that turned into – I didn't know this, but the internship was actually a senior placement for the social work school, and I was just doing it under the table for fun. When I was there, they were really heckling me about changing my degree. But at that point I was a senior in college, so that is how I got to the MSW specifically.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, great. Thanks for sharing that. I have a few just little fun questions. if you had to just use one word, and this is very specific, I'm going to take this very personally, to describe where you're living. Oh, what would that word be?
Hallie Moffitt
I would say that one word to describe where I'm living is safe. I think that I love where I live and I think that we've created a great home that I'm always excited to go to, which is really hard to do, honestly.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, it is hard. And I think we both had roommates where we've had some times. But, yeah, just another push for like, you're gonna meet some really good friends in grad school.
Hallie Moffitt
Totally. Lillie and I met on Facebook, so it works.
Lillie Walker
Facebook Housing Group. If you need housing at Baylor University, check it out. Yeah, you might meet a good friend, you don’t know. Alrighty. Next question is, what is your go to drink order at your favorite local coffee shop or tea place?
Hallie Moffitt
Well, I would say my favorite local coffee shop is probably Pinewood. I also work there, so that adds to the draw. My favorite right now is I like an iced cappuccino with our seasonal syrup. But we're currently out of our seasonal syrup, so the house syrup will also do.
Lillie Walker
Okay, good. And finally, if you had to choose a walk-up song for your hypothetical sport that you're playing, what would your song be?
Hallie Moffitt
Probably Flatliner. Gets me hyped.
Lillie Walker
Thanks for, telling us a little bit more about yourself. Now we're going to dig in a little bit deeper. So, tell us about what brought you to Baylor and social work.
Hallie Moffitt
I kind of already touched on how I got to social work with my under the table internship. Baylor, I toured my senior year of high school. Like I said, I'm from Minnesota. So, I remember googling in high school, like ‘big college Texas’. And I don't know, I guess Baylor really stuck out to me. I ended up visiting, didn't go here. Then when I was applying, to social work programs, I wanted to be in Texas. This was actually the most cost effective for me and I'd visited. It felt like a good, well rounded choice for me to make.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, I love that. Alright. How would you say that you have grown personally and professionally during your time at the Garland School?
Hallie Moffitt
I think that the Garland school has pushed me. I would, I have told people that my favorite part of this program is that you're pretty intensely doing an internship at the same time. And I learned a lot from working directly – I worked at a high school for my two internships. And you learn a lot when you're just like having to do it. And I've had really great supervisors that have taught me a lot clinically as a professional but also helped me grow as an individual and call out strengths in myself that I had never seen in a way that was really unique. And so, I feel like I've grown personally and professionally in one as it's all kind of intertwined.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, that's so true. And I think as we're just kind of thrown into an internship, especially year one of like, we have not really much knowledge. You're just kind of thrown into something, I don't know, it is pretty powerful of like, okay, these people are relying on me. It's really important that I take what I'm learning very seriously. So, I'll echo that - that's something I really enjoy too. Okay. how has your time here shaped the way you see yourself – you talked about that a little bit – and your career as a future social worker?
Hallie Moffitt
Yeah, like I said, my internships here have been in the schools and prior to this program I would have never, ever wanted to be in the schools. I didn't know – my high school growing up didn't have a social worker or even a counselor. So, I didn't know that was a possibility. And so, my only background was my understanding of private practice in a group home. And so that's kind of where I was wanting to go. And now having experience in schools, I'm like really loving it and don't see myself going anywhere else. And so, if I hadn't gotten that opportunity from this program, I don't know, I'd probably be like working the night shift at a group home or something.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, great. okay, so now just to get a little bit more broad and talk about the program in general and your experience in it, could you describe a typical week for you in the program?
Hallie Moffitt
Well, I'll just give you my school schedule.
Lillie Walker
Great.
Hallie Moffitt
Mondays and Wednesdays I'm in class for the whole day, from like 8:00 to 5:00. Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm at my internship at the high school from 8:00 to 4:00 and on Fridays I'm at the high school from 8:00 to noon and then I go to work at the coffee shop until 8:00 at night. So yeah, it's a lot of work.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, and that's something that we do want to say. This is a grad school program. It is going to be strenuous because we want to be competent professionals. so, it's not always easy. Definitely. Thanks for sharing that. You've told us that you're in schools, but could you describe a little bit more about what you do, in schools for your internship?
Hallie Moffitt
Yeah. So, this current internship that I'm in, we're a partnership between Waco ISD schools, Heart of Texas Behavioral Health and the Department of Education. We go into schools and we provide therapeutic services to the students at the school. So, a lot of times that will look like providing support in an array of different ways – if that's just like check ins in the classroom or crisis intervention. But a lot of my days consist of doing individual sessions with the students, I have a caseload of about 20. I meet with them for as long as I can. 30, 45-minute sessions, where I basically do therapy at school. So. Yeah.
Lillie Walker
Can you talk a little bit more about kind of what issues you're addressing, in your therapeutic sessions?
Hallie Moffitt
Yeah, I mean, Waco is a very diverse town, and so there's a pretty diverse array, of population of students. And so, there's kind of everything that you'd imagine there from like relationship issues, substance abuse, anxiety, depression, to, some more niche, topics
00:10:00
Hallie Moffitt
That are hard. But a lot of it consists of me allowing space to process and provide coping skills, some CBT, things like that to kind of alleviate the trauma that they're experiencing in their everyday life and allow them a safe space within school specifically that can be a reset zone for them or, yeah, just a space for them to feel safe in the school.
Lillie Walker
Yeah. And I want to just really point out the fact that Hallie is super great at this, just being her friend. Like, she's really someone that I feel like I can open up to. So, I can only imagine the work that she's doing in schools to cultivate that connection with high schoolers and students that are really, needing that in their lives.
Hallie Moffitt
Thank you.
Lillie Walker
Yeah. Alrighty, moving on. How do you balance coursework with life outside of school?
Hallie Moffitt
I might not be the best one to ask this to.
Lillie Walker
Are any of us really?
Hallie Moffitt
Because I - it's funny, we have a friend that recently told me, like, ‘Hallie, you really inspired me to spend less time on my homework’. I was like, that's awesome. I'm glad I'm inspiring you to do that. But what she means by that is I understand that I'm a person outside of all this. And in order to maintain healthy, like being healthy and good at this, I need to have a life. I need to hang out with my friends. I need to go to bed. I need to eat and cook the food that I'm eating. I need to have balance in my life. And even as I just told my schedule to you, without a lot of the added things, it is pretty busy. I understand the weight of what I'm doing. And I work with my professors of like; I have straight A’s. All my stuff is done, but I give it adequate weight of like, I have to take care of myself in order to do well. So, it's actually - It's hard, but you'll figure it out.
Lillie Walker
Totally. Alrighty. How has the Specialist year of the MSW program differed from the Generalist year and what has surprised you?
Hallie Moffitt
Yeah, the Generalist year is obviously more broad. It gives you, like, a crash course of pretty much everything. I mean, I went into, last year not even knowing what social work was, so I've definitely come a long way. Yeah, it gives you, like, really good touching points for community policy, some individual clinical skills, some community skills, all that so that you can kind of get your feet on the ground, social work-wise. And the second year, the Advanced year, gives you a lot of clinical tools that are pretty specific to your internship. Like I was saying, everything that I'm doing in the schools - it's giving me how to do a treatment plan, how to address a certain behavior, how to work with this certain student, this, that, and the other in a way that is a lot more pointed. I would say that's the biggest difference between the two is, just like, general to specific. I, yeah, have liked the specificity of the skills I learned up until this point.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, anything that has, like, stuck out as a surprise?
Hallie Moffitt
I don't think I.
Lillie Walker
That's okay.
Hallie Moffitt
Yeah, it's been great.
Lillie Walker
Okay, great. all right, just a couple more questions. Kind of close up. What advice would you give our listeners who are considering coming to Baylor, the Garland School, and also just entering the field of social work. What would you advise them on?
Hallie Moffitt
I would advise if you're wanting Baylor, Baylor is a place where I've loved the small class sizes. That's something that works really well for me. I have enjoyed that we are able to identify that religion is a part of people's worlds. And so, I believe that it's giving us some tools of how to work with religion in ourselves as a practitioner as well as within our clients. For people wanting to broach the world of social work, I think you should do it. You're given the skills and the capacity to do so. And, if you are able to approach an MSW program with humility as well as confidence, you'll go a
00:15:00
Hallie Moffitt
Long way and hopefully have a lot of fun.
Lillie Walker
Yeah, that's great advice. Finally, just because we're so curious, where do you see social work taking you professionally if you had to, like, ballpark it for the next five years?
Hallie Moffitt
Like I've said, I love schools. I wish, I hope to get my master's degree and then stay in high school forever. I'm serious. Like, I love the age group, and I love the setting. And, like, now that I've been in schools, I can't see myself anywhere else.
Lillie Walker
She found her passion, guys.
Hallie Moffitt
I found my passion, guys.
Lillie Walker
Alrighty. Well, thank you, Hallie. We appreciate your time. And you're such wise wisdom that you offer.
Hallie Moffitt
Thank you.
Lillie Walker
Thank you for listening. And I hope this gives some good information for, what a master's at Baylor in social work would look like. Sic ‘Em Bears. Bye.
Hallie's journey shows us how specialization can clarify purpose and open doors for meaningful impact. Join us next time as we continue highlighting the many paths within social work.
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