In another interview, Carlin said that his early aspirations for mainstream success had blinded him to the original outlaw within himself — the kid who’d been ejected from summer camp, the high-school dropout, the Air Force demotee. “I’ve spent the first 45 years of my life trying to figure out who I am,” he said.--from the New York Times, 12/28/2008
Who am I anyway? Am I my resume?--A Chorus Line, 1975
Buddy, meet an original outlaw. Some people say we are so bad, we actually don't deserve to be an MSW.
An MSW is a social worker who has a Master's degree in Social Work. The other kinds of social workers are BSWs and those with an Associate's or two-year degree, AAs.
Generally speaking, an MSW will be your therapist, while a BSW will be your case manager. An AA might be your case manager or your case worker. (The lady to the left, Our Miss Plotnick, was probably a School Social Worker, which is something else again. You can see it in her eyes.)
It is one of the eccentricities of social work education that your case worker or case manager might also have done their school work in Botany, Physics or General Studies. Don't worry. They're just as good as the degreed people. Because Social Work is as easily learned in the field as it is in the classroom.
(Or not. This is an ongoing debate, rendered no clearer by a group of New York state laws, passed in 2004, which specify exactly the education, field work, licensing and certification necessary to the different levels of a social worker's career.)
Anyway, the MSW (who must take a licensing exam in order to be employable, thus becoming an LMSW) in any office will probably be the boss. Also, an overwhelming majority of MSWs wish to become therapists, and you can't do that on a BSW alone. If you wish to hang out a shingle and operate on your own, without supervision, you need to undergo a three year process and take another examination, after which you will be an LCSW.
The kicker, as most people will tell you, is that LCSWs, especially those who do not work in an urban area, might possibly earn $50,000 if they are lucky and know how to market themselves. Very few earn more than that--at least not on one job alone. (The LMSW to our right obviously has private resources.)
Teachers become millionaires quicker than social workers do. A get-rich-quick scheme this is not.
We have a BA in English, earned around 1980 with no excess of perspiration, plus about twenty years writing, editing, and whatever in various advertising, publishing and marketing venues. About six years ago we decided that we might be able to help with a few problems we had seen around town, and we eventually enrolled in Adelphi University's MSW program.
But then ((cue Debbie Downer music)) this fall we ran out of money and time and had to leave our studies without graduating. And, what was that other thing, find a job.
In order to do this, we have to write a resume, something which we have hated ever since we wrote our first one in 1972 (we were 14 and wanted an after-school job) and realized that, if our mother wouldn't give us a recommendation, it was unlikely that anyone else would. ("I just don't know how you'll behave in a business setting," said Mom, an extremely honest woman, although sadly unimaginative.)
That brings us to the big WHO ARE WE question, and question it is.
WHO ARE WE? The first thing we knew about ourself was that we loved to write, we sometimes wrote well, and we hated to be bossed around. We also knew we were cute--not generally to boys our own age, but to grown men and sometimes women.
We parlayed these talents into a string of entry-level editorial jobs in which we spent most of our time writing parodies of popular culture and evading responsibility. These days we could make a handsome living at that, but in the early 1980's grownups still ruled the earth and we had to wear big floppy bows on our blouses and chirp "Yes, sir!" even to those bosses who were driven wild nightly by our elegant thighs. 
(You can't really see our thighs here, but it is indeed a pic of ourself when we were young and, apparently, our dates awarded extra-credit points for imaginative use of lip gloss.)
It was a schizotypal kind of world, although we didn't know what that word meant until we went to MSW school.
Eventually we realized that neither our writing talent nor our thighs were going to last forever, and we married someone or other and had our Beautiful Daughter, of whom you will hear more. Then we divorced. Then we went back to the whole writer-editor thing, although at our age we probably should have moved up to the managerial ranks, and we never did.
After the divorce we had very little money, so we also worked retail and clerical and phone pits and whatever. Our resume grew no easier to write, because it didn't show who we were.
It showed that we had to earn a living. It showed that we weren't too proud to do what we had to do. It also showed that we had no particular career track or professional training.
Something tells us that even in the nonprofit world, this resume is not going to be any more impressive with a disconnected MSW training than it was before.
And that's our problem. Original Outlaw is only a resume plus if you happen to be a stand-up comic. (And hey, Seinfeld got pretty big without it.)
So who are we? We are NOT our resume, although that's what we'll be flying in on, in our attempt to gain useful employment. We are not an MSW. And, although we've done everything we can to hone our writing skills, our thighs are no longer combat-ready.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
((This is our actual brother).
