A Little Intern In The Large Social Service Machine

My field placement this year has been a challenging one. I have had to make the switch form a small private non-profit setting to a large County wide agency that serves over 200,000 clients every year, and has more than 3,000 employees. The challenges have been many. First, I am no longer seeing any clients so what is expected of me is very different in many respects. I take on projects and it takes months to complete them. I also had to learn to work within the confines of a system that is largely bureaucratic and driven by policies and procedures. This is not to say that bureaucracy is bad, and I actually think its necessary when an organization must make a concentrated and well coordinated effort to address social needs of large communities. However, the organizational culture in large organizations is very different. I had a difficult time understanding the politics involved and quickly learned the value of being politically astute and aware at all times. Are politics bad? Absolutely not, but learning that took a little while. Adjusting to being in an organization where everything requires the approval of a person higher up was very challenging, but I had to get to a point where I recognized how organizational protocol is critical in maintaining the stability of the entire organization. I felt like I was a little intern lost in a great big social service machine during my first few months at my field placement. The feeling grew and I knew I had to understand the setting before I was ever going to master navigating it. As a result, I decided to take an organizational behavior class offered through the Public Administration program and it has been great. Every time I read a chapter I understand more and more about my organizational environment every day.

I will say that my experiences at my present field placement have been so valuable. Since the day I walked in through the doors of the School of Social Work I knew I wanted to work at the macro-level. Really ask anyone who met me I was walking around telling everyone I was in the COPA concentration even though we hadn’t picked concentrations yet. I absolutely love and feel fortunate that I have been immersed in the world of macro-level social work. I am also happy to have done it as a student because I can still blame my “curiosity” when I ask people to share insider organizational information with me. Although my placement has been rich in lessons and challenges I wouldn’t trade it because I have learned a WHOLE lot about macro-social work, and most importantly about myself as a macro-social worker.