The Longest Week

So this week was the longest of my whole pregnancy. Not because anything happened regarding the pregnancy or Quinn or anything, but because, just for fun, just to make things more interesting than they already are, today I took my licensing exam! And this week of anticipating the exam ended up taking for-ev-er. That’s right. I’m nuts to have done this. With every thing else, I don’t know why I added this anxiety of studying for a major exam while parenting a toddler, remodeling our house and enduring high-risk pregnancy. It wasn’t fun. Just ask the husband; he’s the one who dealt with my emotional responses to this pickle I’ve created.

Here’s the deal. When you have a MSW (Masters in Social Work) and practice in the state of California, you jump many hoops to become an LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Ooh! Aaaah!). You need about 3,000 or so hours of direct supervised service, you have to take classes and then, when all those hours and classes are finally signed off on and approved, you have to take not one but two big exams. You do all that work just to change the three letters after your name into 4 letters after your name. There are other advantages, but this post is already probably boring.

It usually takes about 2-3 years after graduate school to get licensed. I graduated in 2002, then I worked for a few years, then I moved out of state, worked there, came back and lazily started the process of getting all my hours accounted for and signed off on in 2005. Then I got pregnant for the first time. I dropped the ball. Since then I’ve been busy with other stuff.

But this last year, I started noticing this awful phenomenon of people getting licensed who appeared to be so spankin’ fresh out of graduate school. It started to bug me. How come they got to become LCSW’s when I have so much more experience? At work there is a “LCSW Study Group” for people in the process of preparing for their exam. I expressed interest in attending. The leader, and extremely experienced colleague, innocently said, “You’re not licensed yet? I always think of you as licensed.” Gee, that might be because I have been out of graduate school for 6 freakin’ years!

Anyway, I decided to get my ass in gear. I finally dealt with getting all the paperwork together and was eventually approved by the powers that be to take my exam. I scheduled it for today. The day I turned 38 weeks pregnant.

I had about 5 weeks to prepare. I studied in a half-assed way and told myself that if I failed, who could really blame me? I am barely studying and mucho pregnant. But I thought, if I pass, how great would that be? One major step towards licensure finished, never to be redone. I couldn’t imagine trying to get this done with a new baby….It would mean putting it off until I started work again, at the very least.

This last week I took practice exams every day, and mostly did dismally. The week went so slowly, especially as I have become more and more uncomfortable. Sitting in café’s for 4 hour stretches….it’s not good for the hips/back/psyche. Plus there was that nagging fear that whatever preparation I did would be for nothing if I went into labor before taking the test.

I didn’t blog about this process because I would have been too ashamed to admit to my failure (even though I kept on telling myself it was no biggy) and I didn’t want to jinx anything.

Which, if you are Sherlock Holmes-ey enough to notice that I decided to write this fascinating post about the process of social work licensing in the state of CA , you have probably already guessed that I passed!! I am so relieved.

One more exam in the next year, and you can call me KMW, LCSW. Actually, on second thought, maybe I should just stick with “Master KMW” and focus on my family. Put that way, it has a nice ring for now.