Choosing Passion over Profit: My Journey to Social Work

I didn’t have a lot growing up but I my parents made sure we always have what we needed. My mother and father always wanted me to get an engineer or a business degree. They wanted to be able to make more money and become more successful than they ever were. When I showed an interest in history and psychology in high school I knew they would be disappointed in me. I never cared about making money, I knew I wanted to be able to make a living doing something that I was passionate about. One day I hope to get my degree in social work and do just that. One of my favorite sayings is that if you enjoy what you do you will never work a day in your life written by Confucius.
Growing up I had a lot of people in my life that made sure I had what I needed

The first semester of college I took a sociology class and I realized the social aspect of that major also interested me greatly if not more. After taking a psychology careers class I realized that they didn’t really have the sort of work I want to go into. Which pushed me into doing research my first year of college on careers, I realized the goal should be to work toward a social work degree. However, McKendree University doesn’t have a strong social work program and that is why I decided I would have a better chance if I transferred to a different

I went out to collect cans for the food shelter, I helped out at the bowling special olympics, and in December I volunteered to help set up a 5k races Autism, and the thing I took out of my volunteering experiences so far is that everyone has a story and to take the time to listen to others and connect with the world around you. In my experiences you can learn more serving people for an hour than you can learn in a week of classes. My only regret in my freshman year of college is that I didn’t figure out this sooner than I did.
The most memorable place I have ever volunteered was an organization called Let’s Start located in downtown St. Louis. The program works with female addicts and past addicts, that have been convicted of drug related crimes, to start a new life. It started out as a class assignment that I had to go get a certain amount of service hours but I soon feel in love with the program. My job while I was there to play the children and help them with them with homework if needed. There were a few tuesdays where not a lot of children would show up and a few of the helpers were allowed to sit in on the