I took the exam this morning and yay yay yay after some paperwork, I will be an LCSW!
So while everything is fresh in my head, I thought I would post about studying and the exam.
Studying:
Some test prep sites are questionable. After disagreeing with some answers, I decided to focus on studying facts, things that can be proved by a quick Google search. So I didn’t pay attention to any of the “What do you do first” type questions. I knew I needed to study up on things like theories I don’t use and stages of development. I’ve been studying since my last post so about 2 months. My very supportive boyfriend reassuring me and encouraging me to study helped a lot, too. :)

So sites that helped me:
Social Work Podcast
The earlier podcasts cover a theory per podcast. The bibliography is a good resource, too. I noticed a few books cites multiple times and bought older versions of them for a few dollars on Amazon.

LCSW Blog
Social Work Test Prep Blog
These are blogs by people that are also studying or have studied for the exam. Social Work Test Prep is in CA so the exam is different than the exam in IL but the info is still useful.

LCSW Flashcards
User created flashcard sets. Actually good for multiple subjects, not just the LCSW exam.

A friend gave me her study tools. She subscribed to one of the sites that emails a question per day. She collected the questions and answers and used that along with brief descriptions of theories, developmental stages and diagnostic criteria.

I used some of the same tools I used for the LSW exam. I have a practice exam from Social Work Examination Services that I got in grad school. I also reviewed The Complete Guide to Social Work book.

The test:
I went to the Uptown ACT test center in Chicago. If you choose this location, I would recommend public transportation because the meters are for 2 hours and the exam probably takes longer. It rained a lot last night and my meter had condensation in it and I couldn’t read the display. So I took a pic and went inside. Ended up being OK.
Dress in layers! The exam room was pretty cold. This location is really loud (for a test center). I took my LSW exam downtown and it was almost silent. At Uptown, there are little kids from some program down the hall constantly running up and down the hall and screaming. There was a group of people singing and then a woman bellowing, er, singing after that. I heard staff hush the kids multiple times and they had a sign in the hall so it wasn’t their fault. They have big headphones you can wear to block noise and a staff person reminded me about the headphones when the kids started to get noisy. I think you can bring earplugs in, too. I can deal with the noise but if you’re a person that needs silence for test taking, go downtown or some other location.

I saw the word “acknowledge” a billion times. I swear, every “what would you do first” question had an “acknowledge client’s thoughts/feelings” response. And a couple times in the questions the last line said “After acknowledging the client’s feeling, your next step would be…” So I took that to mean that acknowledge was the correct answer.

Most of the content was predictable. I finished in just under 2 hours. I reviewed the first 20 questions because that’s how long I felt it took me to calm down and get in a good test taking state of mind.

So now I figure out the paperwork stuff and I get to make a new sign for my office door at work!

I’m studying for the LCSW exam, hoping to take it by the end of the month. I’ve been hunting for new study aids to see if anything awesome and wonderful has come out since I took the LSW exam 2 years ago. I haven’t found the magic book of passing the exam but I have found a couple new resources.
The Social Work Podcast has been useful so far. Go back to the earlier podcasts, they cover more basic topics. They are concise, interesting and I like the podcaster’s voice.
Social Work Chat Forums A fairly active message board (even though no one has answered my licensure question yet!)about social work topics including licensure.
LCSW Exam Blog I’ve just started reading it. The author covers DSM diagnoses, theories and test taking tips.
I’m searching for a book my clinical supervisor recommended. He said it’s a clinical social work text that gives brief overviews of client topics and the author is Brandler. He mentioned it because he was going to see a new couple and hadn’t seen a couple in a while so he read the chapter on working with couples as a refresher. There is a Brandler that writes social work books, but she writes about group social work. I found a book by Brandell but it doesn’t seem action/treatment focused the way my supervisor was describing.
My brother is an undergrad at a local uni so I’ve been asking him to grab random texts for me.

And if anyone in internetland reads this blog, the basic question that is unanswered on the forum is: Is my clinical supervisor contacted to verify paperwork that I turn in to the Dept of Professional Regulations? It would be supersweet if the actual Dept could answer my question but they don’t answer their phone or emails.

I’m surrounded by clothes that need to be put away, jerseys that need to be put on Ebay and books that need to be read but it’s been a while, I was just feelings guilty about not keeping up my blog.
And I have news!
My agency finally got a grant! Wooooo!
It’s not a research grant, I would be busting out cap lock for that. It’s a program grant but there is an evaluation piece in it that I would be responsible for. I hope this gets me a raise, too.
I probably bitched about this grant months ago. It was all last minute like things usually are at my agency. We rushed around the day before it was due to complete everything. I don’t even think I proofread all of it. My boss drove to the only Fed-Ex location (other than O’Hare) in the area open until 9:30pm.
Right now we are working with a university on a proposal for a research grant. I hope this process teaches us how to work smarter not faster. We have mini due dates before the actual due date of the proposal. We have clearly defined roles as to who writes what section and everyone is aware of their role. We have email and conference call check ins to see how everyone is doing.
Ideally, this process will give my boss the backbone to come back to the agency and demand more of our coworkers next time the agency writes a proposal. We’re a busy agency and use our busy-ness as an excuse as to why we can’t get anything done. It’s long overdue to see these competitive grants as a necessary part of daily tasks and not an addition. We are not going to survive on the funding we have now.
So I guess I should get back to writing my part of the research grant.

I started basic burlesque class at Studio L’Amour last week. Boxing is out, burlesque is in. Hopefully burlesque is a bit more successful. I have high hopes because unlike park district boxing, burlesque class is structured. It feels weird for me to say I want structure but when I am a newbie to something, yes I need an instructor that says “Step 1,2,3 and BOUNCE!” I don’t know how those Montessori kids do it.

As usual, I was just a little bit off for the first class. The instructor said we could wear gym shoes or heels and workout clothes. I figured out this does not mean wear basketball shorts so I wore kind of tight yoga capris. I didn’t figure out that gym shoes would be really bad for the small foot movements sexy walking. Or that a loose fitting tshirt would cover my hips. Hips are the best part of dancing! I kind of suck at being a girl but I will try better next time!

At the end of the month when class is done, the new park district session will start. The boy and I joined the park district fitness center. It’s a pretty small fitness center which leaves no room for me to hide in a corner and sweat over my 20 pound weights without anyone staring at me. The goal is to drop my desired amount of weight by the time I hit 30!

No food pics this time! I did make creme brulee for the first time last week. It turned out tasty and the kitchen torch is fun to use. Also don’t shop at Jewel or Dominick’s for vanilla beans! 1 vanilla bean was $12 at Dominick’s and I went to Cost Plus World market and 2 beans were $3 there.

I came to the conclusion that I just really like tasty food. I like cooking, going to new restaurants, trying new flavors. Maybe if I worked in the food industry, I wouldn’t like food as much. Just like how I don’t have any interest in being a therapist now that I have clients. It’s not really as dramatic as it sounds. I’m just having a hard time with a client and wake up on the days I play therapist, hoping my clients have canceled. I don’t want them to stay sick, I just want them to get well with someone else.

I have a client that is draining me and she has a type of mental illness that doesn’t usually have a great recovery. So she is going to stay like this for a long time, maybe forever. If I had my own private practice, she would be mine to deal with for years. I may have mentioned it before, I was talking to my supervisor about keeping my clients after my supervision hours were finished. I said I would be OK seeing my clients for a few months but it’s not like I wanted to keep them on for a year. He looked surprised and asked why not. As a private practice therapist, he wanted a client that would come regularly for a year. I’ve worked in so many short term treatment settings that I forget that this is what some social workers do. They see the same people long term. They get to know clients so well that when they bring up a random friend’s name, you don’t have to stop and ask what their relationship with that person is like.

I told my supervisor that this client was difficult and he acknowledged that she is and that there is nothing I can do about it. She is difficult in a way that I have to keep pulling her back in. I have to reassure and engage her in therapy. I have to make extra effort to be supportive. If I wouldn’t do these things, she would probably stop showing up. And there is where I’m torn! She is still coming back so obviously I’m doing my job but I’m also starting to dislike my job. All of this makes me question why I’m getting my clinical license to begin with. I know part of this is just anxiety over being a new therapist.

I realize this blog (the interesting parts at least) is kind of turning into a food blog. Eventually it will turn into something like This is why you’re Fat.

This cake actually wasn’t supposed to be very fattening. My friend asked me to make a rainbow cake for a potluck at her house. Most of my creative food stuff is for potlucks. She sent me this recipe from The Omnomicon (love the name and I’m pretty sure the author is a SA goon.) There is no rainbow cake recipe, just a white cake of your choice recipe plus tips on making it rainbowed. This cake just called for soda and cake mix.

It’s all lumpy but I was afraid to use an electric mixer because of the carbonation. It doesn’t matter in the end because you stir it a lot more when you add food coloring.
So I divided out the batter into 6 bowls and used my pretty gel dye. I thought the dye would be brighter with less. I felt like I was using a ton of dye. I was scared to make the red an actual blood red because of the amount of dye I would have to use. Isn’t red dye poisonous to children? Oh well, no kids died at the potluck. That I saw.

Then I poured the batter in to the pan, one color on top of the next. One of my friends commented that the batter looks like fake food in the movie Hook.

And then I baked it according to the box instructions plus a few more minutes like the rainbow cake directions say. Its a very squishy cake because of the soda. I took the cake out when the yellow started to look dark.
I let the cake cool while I tried my new dino muffin tins with the leftover cake batter. I set up my cooling rack and tried to get the cake out with disastrous results. The entire middle of the cake stuck, one of the sides started to slide off the rack and I started to make howling noises. No way to repair with frosting. Oh the agony of a broken cake.
No pictures of the broken cake, it was too hard to look at. The dino cakes didn’t turn out well either. The cake didn’t want to come out of the tins. It was the first time I used the muffin pan so I may not have properly greased it.
So I didn’t want to make a new cake and I didn’t want to waste the already made cake. So I made some pudding, used the whipped cream my boy made the night before for dessert, some leftover berries and made a rainbow parfait.

And it was good! It was tasty and still rainbow and kind of pretty.

I had a no-baby shower last weekend. I think it was the best shower I’ve been to. Drinking, cheese filled foods, cupcakes, a fish hat and lots of friends and some family. I got some baby showed decs from the party store and tacked NO onto them but apparently it wasn’t clear enough what we were celebrating because the people at a table near us asked if I had a boy or girl. At least they were nice enough to assume I already had the baby if I was drinking. A little vodka in the breast milk is good for baby!
I registered as a not-the-mama-to-be and got some awesome gifts. My grandma took the opportunity to ship me half of her kitchen. I think she is afraid she will never see me or my female cousin get married and she doesn’t know what to do with all of these kitchen things.

Work has been fucking depressing. We have more budget troubles and we did not apply for either of the research grants I was working on. One of the grants would have been a revival of a project we worked on with a local university. For some reason, no one decided to ask the professors at the university if they were also applying until the day before the grant was due. Surprise, they were and they were upset that we didn’t tell them we were applying, too. Maybe if we had called earlier, we could have collaborated again and submitted the damn app.
So now the next round of applications aren’t due until early summer and I keep telling my boss “we have to start early” and she keeps..doing nothing. This is something she really has to start because it’s a collaborative grant and she has to initiate the collaboration because no one knows little research assistant girl!

I e-attended a NASW CEU presentation. I’m happy that they have developed this in person/online CEU workshop series. They’re not terribly expensive and they have a good range of topics. They still have some kinks to work out. The sound went out on the presentation for a while and the mic didn’t pick up questions the audience asked. The presentation was on holistic therapy which sounds good but it was a little too new age for me. Past life regression? Really? So much for evidence based practice! I was hoping for a little more accessible topics, not some woman selling her book.

Also, I am adoring Amanda Palmer’s post on her song Oasis. I think we need more upbeat songs about abortion. Let’s dance.

I was telling my boy yesterday that I think the best job would be reviewing bakeries. He pointed out I would be huge if I had this job but it would be a delicious premature death by suffocating in my own fat.
My roommate and I reviewed local cupcake bakeries for science a couple years ago with excellent results. The excellent result being using Sweet Mandy B’s for our awesome volcano cake the next year.
The boy and I are planning my No-Baby Shower and once again I have the chance to summarize cupcake findings FOR SCIENCE.
Reviews behind the jump.

Continue Reading »

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions but my boxing class at the park district just happened to start the 2nd week of January so that means I will just happen to learn boxing this year.
It only took one class for me to realize that the boxing boot camp class I took at Bally’s was good for making me sweat but not so good for technique. But that’s why it was boxing boot camp, not boxing training.
The park district is boxing training. Some of these guys (it’s mostly guys) will go on to fight in amateur matches. Some already have. As it is with most athletic things, I am the suckiest one in the group. Everyone seems to tolerate this pretty well. People will stop me and correct my stance or press on my fist to remind me to tighten it up. A girl helped me turn in circles and jab today. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. So far I just punch bags and shadow box so I haven’t interacted much with others.
During my first class 2 guys were sparring and there was some blood. It seems like the blood part is optional. The instructor asked a girl if she wanted to spar today and she said no, she doesn’t want to hit people. So I guess I can train and not worry about my pretty lil face.

Happy new year all!
It’s hard to remember to post with all this holiday excess going on!
I did the whole Xmas thing with my family and it was surprisingly calm this year. My big brother kept his proselytizing to a minimum and I kept my shaking of children to once an hour. I sent out Xmas cards with a picture of Santa in meditation pose and the words “Dharma Dharma Dharma!” above him. Dharma is translated to ho in Japanese. Buddhist joke! I noticed that I didn’t get a card from my aunt and uncle in The South and I don’t think I got one from them last year either. I haven’t seen them in a while but I still talk to my cousin. I sent her a card and present and got a “Happy CHRISTmas!” text back from her. Oh, Jesus lovin family members. I feel more Buddhist the less I let you upset me.

For NYE, I went to Takashi with my boy and friends and then to Subt to see Holy Fuck with a bigger group of friends. Takashi is a Japanese fusion restaurant and it doesn’t focus as heavily on the raw fishes as other Japanese restaurants do. I think they were just as fancy as Blackbird (the restaurant I went to last NYE) but about half the price.
Subt was good because it wasn’t packed so there was room to stand in the back and drink without being smashed into by drunk hipsters. Afterward was late night food and immediate passing out. I’m getting old.

I went to the doctor for my tube tying follow-up. He said everything looks good and reminded me I can have unprotected sex before I left. How often does a doctor do that!
At work, we seem to be trudging along with a grant application that I don’t really think is feasible. Grants often require a match which means the agency has to put up a certain percentage of the amount they are requesting. This particular grant requires a large match amount and our agency just doesn’t have it. We can use in-kind matches, percentages of the salaries of staff that will work on the project but that won’t cover the full amount. It seems like we are going after the grant because we are desperate for new funding sources which ultimately wastes a lot of my time when I put grant writing/prep effort into a grant we aren’t going to get.
The exec team member I’m working with did bring up a good point. He said if we could just get one grant in, it might give us some momentum and the CEO would notice our efforts and maybe give us more time to work on future grants. Rights now there is no designated grant application time for the exec team. It’s just tacked on to everyone’s regular job. It’s a big part of my job but I have a few applications in process and other stupid stuff to do. I spent some of this week filing a big stack of papers and thinking about how it would make much more sense to hire a part time person to do the admin BS part of my job. I know, no money in the budget.

Next week starts boxing and next month starts burlesque lessons. I’m going to bash and bounce!