CSUF MSW STUDENTS SPEAK ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE STARTING THE MASTER PROGRAM [5:05-10:07]

And I remember I had this moment in March on was, she heard the probably this in our practical class where I spent a lot of my early semester being like, who imposter syndrome. And at some point I realized that wasn't, I could ask myself, like, do I belong here? Can I be a therapist? I'm equipped to give advice. And I got to a point where I'm like, those are like, those are not useful questions for me. And for me, the way I think of it is like, I can never convince myself on the other way, like, I'm not the person that's going to be like, you know what, I do belong here because that doesn't feel authentic. It doesn't like work for me. So instead I just shifted my focus and asked myself a different question. So like, I said, asking myself, do I belong and my good enough is just like, how do I get better? Kind of coming to to practicum with that kind of sentiment of curiosity and openness. I think just took me out of it where I was no longer even concerned with if I belong here. And I was just going to worry about, like, how do I get better as a therapist? How do I start this plan? You know, what kind of learn about it? And I felt like after that kind of epiphany and just like clicked and I mean, obviously not every session or every day internship or school was great. But I think not even asking myself the question that's do I belong here and just focusing on different questions. It's kind of how I cope with it in my first year. I love that. That's, that's great. You really focused on the learning objectives, rather than the self analysis. You took the curriculum approach and said, how much can I get out of this? How can it grow? And Marjan, you're absolutely right. Speaking as the they who do admissions, we absolutely would not have let you and if you didn't belong here, that would never have happened. Kelly's to go via does not make mistakes would just put a right to put it out there. Anyone else have anything they want to say on that topic? Yeah. So for me and poster syndrome, it started kicking in more in my second year, definitely than compared to the first year. Just because the first year, it was more education based. So I still felt pretty confident. You know what? I'm in the role of a student still. I'm still learning. But once we actually got placed into practicum, that's when start kicking in. It's like, okay, people are really trusting me to care for people right now. And so that's it just kind of blindsided me when it hit me, but it was a matter of just reminding myself that we were chosen for a reason. And that I have the skill set or else I would have been placed where I got placed. Because that also was a big something that was out in my mind. I kept questioning myself, do I even have the skill set have I learned enough, am I even ready to take on this role? But it's more just trusting, trusting the process and trusting the people who put us, who allowed us to come into this program and also placed us into our internship sites. And that we're here to learn and we're here. We're going to make a few mistakes, but to not let those mistakes start clouding us and start turning into I'm not good enough for this role. I'm not good enough to be here. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. The experience, certainly, especially at the first year of the program while you're in internship classes, definitely feels a bit like building a plane while you fly it. And I think the thing that's important not to rush past is that some degree of struggling self-doubt, some wave of, oh my goodness, what did I get myself into is very common as an experience. It doesn't, it's not a signal of some impending doom where that something has gone wrong. Similarly, if you don't have that first initially or until later or by some miracle at all, that doesn't mean a bad thing either. There's room for a lot of diverse experiences. And then the other thing I would say is if you are feeling like in over your head or overwhelmed, hey, it's, you're not alone. And be the cool thing about it is like, especially if it's in your internship then in your practice classes, if you're really engaged with the material and the conversations that are happening, you're going to be picking up things. Oftentimes, it'll be like two weeks after you could have really used it the last time. But often my experience is when I find myself in a situation where I'm grasping for the tools that I don't yet have a good handle on to figure it out. It can be a really effective motivator, kind of what Chris was saying, his strategy was of saying, okay, I'm going to really dive into this and try to learn this so that I don't end up in the situation again. For me, it can be pretty easy to fall back into like the wrong idea that I sort of have to have it all within me to be a good therapist or a good clinician or something. But in reality, like so much of what we're doing is learnable. If you feel like not great at it now, it doesn't mean you're not going to be great at it. Even in a little while, it'll be surprised at how fast you can pick things up and get going on things with your support from your field instructor, your faculty, like the different classes, things that are going on. Oh, and especially if you're from like any identity group that has to deal with an extra step on top of like the regular struggles of life, there are a lot of systems that are at play that are causing you to doubt yourself.