Hello!!

Hello all!
My name is Alicia Wojcik and I am a first year, full time student working on my MSW at USC! I am originally from a suburb of Chicago, Illinois and moved out here in August to begin the program. I graduated in May '06 from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in sociology and gender women's studies and knew that I had to go on to get a masters! After identifying that I wanted to work with children in the school setting, I realized that I wanted to help them get the most of their education. Having worked as a camp counselor for junior high kids, I realized that my "kids" had other stressors in their lives that affected them in many ways. How can kids learn about math if they are worrying about problems they may be experiencing at home??? That's when I determined that my calling was to help those kids so that they may have a greater chance at succeding in school, which of course, will help them succed in life! Plus, kids are hilarious and they don't even know it. That and I may just be a kid at heart (and probably for the rest of my life!) and can easily identify with the population! In any case, from the moment I entered the program, I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish. This of course, is not true for lots of people. In fact, most of my social work friends are having difficulty picking a concentration in the field of social work because there is so much you can do! After getting accepted in a couple of different programs, I decided on USC for a couple of reasons. The first is, what better place to learn about social work than in Los Angeles?? There are so many opportunities here, not to mention the richness of diversity which is present in the city and the classroom! I also looked into the different placements that USC offered and was excited to receive a challenging placement that would prepare me for life after school! While it was difficult to pick up and move out here and start fresh, the experience has been amazing. I never knew I could learn so much about myself when moving 2,000 miles away from all my family and friends! I came out here knowing no one in the Los Angeles area. The closest people I knew were 600 miles away, living in the Bay area, and I didn't have a clue for who to put down for a contact in the "In case of emergency" area! (That was a moment where I wondered, "What exactly made you think you could do this Alicia?!?") Yet, despite my reservations, coming to USC has been an excellent decision. I'll have more opportunities to explain later all about the process of moving out here, but for now, I must go back to reading! (the favorite past time of all grad students everywhere!)