DECISION MAKING

What is your course about?

Many people would compare Social Work to other social sciences like psychology and sociology, or other helping professions like therapists and counsellors. The distinctive difference of Social Work is that it’s focused on equipping us with the knowledge, skills, and values to empower and improve the lives of people, particularly the marginalised and disadvantaged groups. This means that we do learn some of the knowledge that psychology and sociology majors learn. (Btw, I have come to realise in my 3 years+ of uni that social sciences have more similarities than differences!) After all, how can we help people if we don’t know about human development, emotions, attachment patterns, trauma (psychology concepts), or if we don’t know about social structures, social capital, and oppression (sociological concepts)? Other than such knowledge, Social Work has its own frameworks that guide our assessments and interventions. Now, social workers are not professionally trained in what you imagine therapists and counsellors do, but we do learn how to provide basic active listening and emotional support. However, such individual support is only one way in which Social Workers enact change. We are also taught group work, community development, policy analysis, and research.

Were you from JC/Poly and what did you study? What was your thought process like when you were choosing your course?

I was from JC and I studied BCME (Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Economics)! To be very honest, I didn’t really seriously think about what I wanted to study in University until quite late in J2. Although all along, I had wanted to study psychology since secondary school and for a short period of time, I wanted to study psychology in polytechnic but because I wasn’t sure at that time, I decided to just go to JC first and delay that decision. When I was looking at the universities’ websites at the end of J2, I chanced upon Social Work on the NUS website and I immediately felt that it was very aligned with my values and hopes to do something to tackle social issues in society. When there was an opportunity to apply for a double major in Social Work and Psychology, I eventually chose that as there was the flexibility to drop/change my majors anyway, so it was a win-win situation. During the break between graduating from JC and starting university, I also applied to NCSS for their Sector Internship Programme and they placed me in a social service agency where I had a taste of what Social Work is actually like. That exposure concretised my decision.

What courses/universities were you choosing between? Why NUS Social Work over the others?

I didn’t really choose between courses as I was only looking at Social Work and Psychology. As I could take both in NUS, I didn’t have to choose one over another. There are only two local universities that offer Social Work, namely NUS and SUSS. At that point in time, SUSS wasn’t in my consideration simply because the majority of my friends applying for local universities were considering NUS and NTU. So for the convenience of keeping in touch with my friends, it was very obvious to me that NUS Social Work is my best option! 🙂

ADMISSIONS/SCHOLARSHIPS

Are you on any scholarship/know people on scholarships? Which scholarships would you advise juniors to look out for?

I’m under the NUS Merit Scholarship which covers my tuition fees and there’s also an allowance component to it. I’m not sure about the current benefits but when I was awarded the scholarship in AY18/19, I was given guaranteed hostel admission of my choice, but provided that I pass the respective admission interviews (if any). If you’re interested in pursuing Social Work, aside from the NUS scholarships, MOHH and NCSS also give out various scholarships.

TEACHING CIRRICULUM

What is the Course Structure like for NUS Social Work?

• overview of y1-4?
• branches/main modules in Social Work
• is there any specialisation or anything

The Social Work curriculum has both the theoretical component and the practice component. The practice component is easier to understand: all Social Work students have two compulsory graded placements, which are basically internships where we intern at various social service agencies, government institutions, or research institutions to apply what we learn in practice under the supervision of a well-trained social worker. You don’t have to source for these placements yourselves as the department would provide us with a list of options to rank our preferences once we have completed all the prerequisite modules. There are a range of settings that you can choose from, including family service centres, hospitals, schools, youth work agencies, nursing homes, rehabilitative settings, prisons, court, child protection agencies, mental health agencies, etc. Of course, for the settings that specialise in more complex needs, they may only accept students doing their second placement where they have a bit more exposure. You don’t have to worry about this as the department will give a more detailed briefing about placement for each batch of students!

For the rest of our modules, here’s my unofficial way of categorising them. The graduation requirements tend to evolve over the years, so it’s best that you refer to the department’s website for the most updated info!

There are no specialisations in the Social Work course, but there are some modules that focus on a specific social cause / population. Accordingly, the types of placement settings you go to would also expose you to some of the knowledge and skills specific to that context. But the broad principles of Social Work are applicable across settings.

What are lessons and grading like?

• Are lessons more of lecture-tutorials or seminars?
• grading: is it more proj work or class participation or written exams/quizzes?

Level-1000 to Level-3000 modules are lecture-tutorial style while Level-4000 modules are mostly 3-hour seminars, though there are some level-4000 modules that still keep to the lecture-tutorial format. As for grading, I would say that the weightage of each component differs. Class participation is usually 10-20% depending on how much the module requires you to participate to learn e.g. skills based modules and honours level modules definitely have higher class participation component. Project work starts to gain higher weightage in the Level-3000 and Level-4000 modules. Because of the pandemic, a lot of our exams are converted to take-home papers. Some lecturers would give us a short window of time to complete the paper, while others may just convert it into a term assignment where we are given more time to do. However,requirements-wise, usually those assignments would need more research and planning. As a general tip, I think it’s good to consider what kind of assessment style you prefer. Unfortunately a lot of our social work modules are core modules, but it’ll be good to plan your modules such that the combination of the assessment formats across the modules don’t overwhelm you.

Do you have a lot of project work? What are your projects like?

As far as I know, every module would have a group project component but the weightage of it differs. Some modules give different scores for the report and the presentation, some only have either presentation or report, while some have both components but only give a single mark for both. I wouldn’t say that it’s a lot of project work because university modules usually have project work components anyway. Though coming from JC, where a lot of our work is independent work, getting used to working together can take some time to transition–that’s totally normal ya!

Our projects differ depending on the type of modules. The following is my non-official categorisation of the types of social work modules:

Favourite/least favourite modules? (This is more to give an idea of the kind of content you study in the course, I guess HAHA)

I must caveat to say that I don’t think any of the modules I have taken in Social Work are terrible in anyway but my personal favourites are SW3105 Community Work Practice and SW2106 Social Group Work Practice. For SW3105, it was a very enlightening learning experience where I first learned about what power structures and oppression are , and how we can mobilise communities and tap on community assets. I think maybe because I personally like exploring neighbourhoods in Singapore, I really enjoyed the group project where we were interviewing rental block residents and making observations to do an asset-mapping of the community that eventually was also submitted to the organisations serving that community. SW2106 was very fun too because of the role plays. Being able to facilitate groups is also a soft skill that pretty much everyone can find a use for, so what I learned from this module wasn’t only helpful in preparation for a social work career but also a useful skill to apply in other aspects of life.

Who’s suited for this course?

I personally think that we need people from all walks of life to be in Social Work. Since we work with very diverse populations, we need the diversity in the course/profession to learn from each other too! So rather than saying who is suited, I think there are some things that you may need to be prepared for: Social Work is not just a course that teaches you things for you to internalise and apply in your placements. As the main tool is our self, be prepared that the course requires us to do quite a lot of self-reflections so that we gain self-knowledge. Even if you are not as keen to be a social worker and you prefer to do more indirect practice work (see the question below on career prospects), our curriculum nevertheless still prepares us for both, so reflections are still part of our assignments and you need to be prepared to do them in your course. I mentioned role-plays just now, which again is part and parcel of our training. Let yourself be thick-skinned and challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zones. Every role play is surely going to be nerve-wrecking, no matter how many times you have done it before. But trust that the Social Work classroom and our professors are very skilled at making the space safe for us to make mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes in class, we just need to learn from it. An open, non-judgemental attitude is very important too, especially because the populations we work directly with tend to receive a lot of judgements from the larger society already, and we don’t want to perpetuate that.

Do you think there are any misconceptions that people might have regarding your course?

Misconception 1: Studying Social Work = no future

When I was Year 1, I had a significant number of peers who shared with me that their parents were not very supportive of their choice to pursue Social Work because of a misconception that “there is no future”. If you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in pursuing Social Work or just curious about what Social Work is. I encourage you to challenge what you understand by “future prospects”. Surely, social workers don’t earn as much as other more “prestigious” positions, but we are a profession with a career progression path (see the section on career prospects). Many people in our society end up in jobs that they don’t find meaningful. In Social Work, we also see a lot of mid-career switchers who felt that they wanted their jobs to be more than a job. What do you look for in a course and a career? That’s a question that you have to answer for yourself 😉

Misconception 2: Social Work is just like volunteering, what is there to study?

If you had volunteering experiences before, do you ever wish that you could be more equipped? I don’t want to unfairly distance ourselves from volunteering because the heart of a volunteer to serve is a GREAT attitude that social workers should have. However, I hope you can tell from the module examples I’ve given, that there is a lot to learn about society, social issues, self-reflections, and values-questioning (of ourselves and our society) so that we can become effective instruments of change.

Was there any expectation that wasn’t fulfilled?/Any regrets?

None at all!

CAREER PROSPECTS

What career paths are available for a Social Work student?

PLENTY! As mentioned in the previous part on misconceptions of Social Work, social workers have a whole range of employment opportunities. We can broadly classify them into direct practice and indirect practice. Direct practice would involve working with various populations directly e.g. in family service centres, in hospitals, in government ministries like Child Protection Service, in Singapore Prisons, in schools etc. On the other hand, indirect practice includes career paths like management and leadership in the social service sector (e.g. sector planning in the National Council of Social Service), research (in community settings or in academic institutions), and policy-making. Of course, the two types of practices are interlinked, and in fact, a lot of social workers in indirect practice had experience in direct practice prior to their current roles. You can check out the skills framework for social workers under the SkillsFuture website here to get an understanding of the career progression!

What kind of internships do most Social Work students take on? Any advice for internships?

As mentioned in the curriculum section, we have two compulsory placements where we are posted by the school. You get to rank your preferences but you may not always get your first choice (depends on supply and demand of placement positions available). As far as I know, you cannot look for your own internships and count that as your placement because placement requires a trained social worker to be your supervisor who will guide you to integrate theory into practice. Nevertheless, any other additional internships that you take on yourself is definitely a bonus in terms of exposure for you. However, as many social service agencies would already be taking in social work students as their interns under the placement scheme, the number of internship positions offered outside of placement may not be that high, though I have had friends who managed to secure such internships so it’s not impossible! For myself, my self-sourced internship was with a government agency. Social workers often have to interact with a lot of professionals from various institutions in society. So if you want to do an additional internship for your own learning, be open to consider a non-Social Work internship. It’ll offer you a different lens that could be helpful for you in the future!

STUDENT LIFE

Was JC/Poly or Uni more stressful?/is NUS Social Work very stressful/competitive?

I would say they cannot be directly comparable. My first year of uni did require a bit of effort to make the transition on my end because as a Science student all my life, I wasn’t used to writing essays but university has a lot of essays to be written, other than the group work presentations and our compulsory placements. The good thing is that NUS Social Work is a very very wholesome and supportive community. I do hear from recent batches of freshmen that online school made it harder to make friends so I would really advise you to take the initiative to join projects/enrichment activities organised by the Society of Social Work Students to know more people!

Are there any exchange programmes for Social Work?

Yes! Social Work majors can go for exchange as well. I personally didn’t opt to go for exchange because I didn’t have a country in mind where I wanted to go. Either way, my batchmates all belong to the unfortunate batch of students whose exchange plans were the first to be disrupted by Covid-19. Given the current global pandemic situation, I would really suggest that you keep your mind open and be prepared that any in-person exchange programmes would carry the risk of being cancelled.

Did you choose to stay in halls during your time at NUS?

Yes! I stayed in a residential college in my first two years of university 🙂 It’s definitely a good way for you to get to know people outside of your majors. However, there is of course, a cost consideration to it which not everyone can afford. So don’t worry about ‘missing out’ if you see a lot of your friends staying in halls/RCs! There are other ways to have a rich student life too!

What do you do in your free time at NUS! Clubs you can join, etc.

I shall share more about the social work related things that I spent my time on outside of the academic things. If you’re interested in other NUS-wide CCAs, there are student life fairs every semester that you can look out for. In my first two years of university, I was part of the Neighbourhood Health Service committee. It’s a health screening project targeting low-income elderly, helmed by a multidisciplinary team of students from Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy, and Social Work. It was a really good chance for me to serve the community and also work with students from the healthcare disciplines. In my third year, I was in the Exco for Society of Social Work Students (SSWS). SSWS is the academic society for social work students, representing the major and providing welfare and enrichment opportunities for the student body. Regardless of when you are reading this, definitely reach out to SSWS if you need any help with understanding the curriculum or you want to participate in the student life activities specially for the major. SSWS also organises the freshmen orientation camp for those interested in social work. So look out for that!

Some other projects that are Social Work related are: NHS Kids, Signapse, Trigen just to share a few more that you can check out!

Any advice for juniors planning to study Social Work at NUS in the future?

Social Work is a journey that forces you to make personal growth as you learn to be a social worker. This is an inherently human profession that the course is preparing us for, so give yourself the permission to look within yourself. Keep yourself supported by fellow coursemates–these relationships continue when we enter the sector. A lot of professors and very senior social workers speak very fondly of their people who were from their batch and I think that just goes to show that these relationships can really be sustained for a long period of time. Reach out whenever you need help; this journey is surely a fruitful one!