For many social work students there was an event, a situation, an issue, something that influenced our decision to go into social work. For others, maybe we just had that "savior complex" all along. Or, maybe, we just fell into social work and realized it was our calling. No matter the reason one chooses social work as their life profession, all of us tend to hear the same thing all the time. Here are five things social work students are sick of hearing:

1. "You're not going to make any money."
Trust me, if we were picking our profession based on how much money we can make, none of us would choose social work. This profession is not currency driven, it's wanting to help people and lead a life of service. Do we deserve to make more money? Yes. But we know going into it that we have to put helping people above how much money we make or else we are really going to be disappointed and our clients are not going to get the best of us.

2. "So you're one of those crazy feminists?"
If by crazy feminist you mean someone who believes in the equal rights between men and women, why yes, I am! If you mean a bra-burning, man-hating, radical feminist, no, I am not. I suggest you learn more about feminism and the mission of social workers before calling any one of us "crazy" anything.

3. "Ohhh so you're going to be a baby snatcher?"
Nope. Fun fact: working for child protective services does NOT require a social work degree or license, and many who work there are not social workers! While many BSW graduates end up working for CPS because of the great experience, there are so many fields of social work that do not involve working for the state at all. Child welfare, families, substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, gerontology, international, policy-changing and even pet therapy are some of the fields of social work. And another thing - working with CPS does not mean you are just taking kids away. It's finding preventative solutions for families to better care for their children. Terminating a parent's rights is the last and worst case scenario. No worker wants to remove a child from their home.

4. "Can't you just be a teacher if you want to work with kids?"
Like in number three, the assumption is that every social worker wants to work with kids. This is not the case. Surprisingly enough, children are not the only ones who need help in the United States and around the world. While social workers do often work with children, we take a completely different direction than teachers do. Teachers are amazing and wonderful and help a child learn, while social workers work to break down barriers that interfere with a child's ability to learn such as poverty, inadequate health care, lack of transportation and other resources, etc.

5. "I know a social worker and he/she hates her job." OR "You're going to get burned out really quick doing that job" OR any variation of this.
You probably do. And, I probably will get burned out time to time. The social work profession is one you take knowing you'll be under-appreciated and under-paid but yet you'll do your best work anyways. Why? Because we've dedicated ourselves to be selfless and giving and humble for the one simple reason that we want to make a difference. There will be days where we will be stressed out, burned out, can't stand to look or speak to another person... but the next day we'll pull up our social work pants and give everything we have to helping others, and we will love almost every minute of it.

I know it's tough for people to understand why we choose this lifestyle but for every one of us, we have a reason and an understanding that this is our life calling and we wouldn't have it any other way. So please, support us in this journey to being social workers and for the love of our sanity, don't call us crazy feminists or baby-snatchers one more time!