The UCLA professor I know said in the Resume, conveying in your bullet points and your held titles a sense that you had leadership roles or positions is important. So not just that you worked somewhere or interned somewhere, but that you were trusted with additional responsibility or, well more of a leadership role or position. This isn't required, I didn't have any leadership roles to speak of in my resume, but I did show "leadership" in other ways. For example, I helped develop an intake packet for one agency I interned at, so I had to research a ton of stuff about mental health screening, addiction screening, and make sure everything was evidence based etc and the most widely used screening tools in the field, and incorporate that with other information to make this long packet for new clients. So that wasn't necessarily "leadership" but it was a lot of "responsibility" and took I guess creativity and resourcefulness to create that. Maybe you have done something like this as well, some kind of project that was integral to an agency you worked at. So lets just sum it up as saying, in your Resume and in your SOP conveying "leadership,""resourcefulness," and "responsibility." 

The professor also talked about the importance of showing maturity. What I recall he clarified that hto mean was showing a clear understanding of what you are getting yourself into. Understanding the extent of your committment, the weight of the responsibility of having vulnerable clients depending on you to do your job and help them. This is something that really hit home for me when I started interning at a school with other people's kids. That takes it to a whole new level of... ok, this is serious, I really have to be aware of what I'm doing here and realize the long term impact these sessions could have. These clients really depend on you to be there, to really focus and be present with them, to help them feel and be safe. Some of this might sound like obvious basic stuff, but it's one thing talking about it, it's another thing feeling it. 

To expand on this, consider that many clients will have suffered extreme trauma and abuse. These stories will sound so extreme sometimes that it might not even seem real, like it's hard to imagine someone coming up with these kinds of cruelty and implementing them on another human being, especially their child. Sometimes you might hear stories like that once a week or so and sometimes it might be every day. When clients are sharing that, they are looking for us to convey to them in some way that we can't handle it, and they stop sharing. They are scared to share it in part because of that response, because they think they wont be believed, and it's also just often very hard to talk about, also alot of undo guilt and shame. So going into this field, we gotta know we can support these clients through that. That means carefully listening to every detail and being in sync with that client, and then the next one and the next one. Knowing that if you shut down on them, if you change the subject, if you do anything but stay connected it could harm them and in theory make them reluctant to ever talk about it again to you or anyone else. That's I think the kind of recognition that the professor was talking about, the wieght of responsibility as a clinician, understanding what we are getting into and affirming we are up to the task.


The other thing the professor talked about was that an applicant should convey that they have a broader mission to fulfill in the field of social work. UCLA Luskin is all about calling us "change agents" which means, they want to graduate people who are going to impact at not just the micro level but at the macro level of organizational leadership, advocacy, policy, and law. So I would encourage you to broaden your view of your career and think long term. Maybe you will get burned out on therapy if that's your thing, or get burned out on case level work at a hospital, or child welfare agency, or whatever. Maybe then or maybe right off the bat even, you will engage in broader efforts to advance social justice for your populations of interest and or all vulnerable populations. 

I think that's enough info for now, just somethings I recalled about my chat with the professor with some conext added, I hope it's helpful, thanks for reading.