Classes I Need To Take To Be A Social Worker?

Stop. Get a college degree, first. In anything. You can learn about being a social worker in grad school. Or on the job. Anyone can become a social worker, even lawyers!

one guy I know, who was a lawyer, did just that!

Take a challenging group of HS courses in the various disciplines; language arts, hard science/math, history. Try to choose AP courses. Then go to a decent college and try the menu for the first two years. See what you enjoy and what areas you excel in.

Google MSW for the degree requirements. Here’s a “sample”: http://www.nyu.edu/socialwork/admissions/msw.reqs.html

Liberal Arts is usually a good “I don’t know what I’m gonna do” degree.

Trust me lol

Tenth grade is a bit young to be stressing out over your career, though with the economy being what it is I can see how you might be concerned.

Your main immediate concern is getting into college. So take college prep courses. Once in college, it does not seem to matter much what you major in to do grduate work for social worker preparation. If you have an interest in people you might want to consider a degree in psychology. It would be helpful to have some law courses as well.

@loslinparadise. Umm tenth grade is not too young to be stressing over my career. I have my option sheets to fill out which will be my classes in grade 11. I kind of need to know what I want to be so I take the right classes and not have to go back to high school to get the credits I need. I would like to be a physchologist but I need to see my guidance counselor to make sure I am capable of it. If not Im going to be a social worker. But I want to go to university. Im too smart for college (sorry about the bluntness I cant think of any other words to say it)

It’ll be hard to convince people you’re too smart for college if you don’t know that, on average, Universities, being so much bigger, generally take more of the less qualified student population. Colleges, being smaller, tend to be more prestigious and can be much more picky about who they accept. In any case, you can get a very high quality education at either type of institution.

Anyway, it may seem like everything is so important now, in eleventh grade, and you will destroy your life if you don’t take the right courses. When you’re forty, I am nearly positive that you will look back, and realize that not only did high school not matter, but neither did the courses you took in college… ahem… university, or, for that matter, grad school.

Most people end up doing things that are a lot different from what they imagine in high school. Life tends to throw us all kinds of curves. It is a rare person who can visualize a life in high school, and make it happen as visualized.

My point is that these things really don’t matter. What’s important is educate yourself, and that can best be done in courses that really interest you. That way, you will work the hardest, and learn the most, and be most prepared for any opportunities that come along. If you swot away at the course that someone tells you are best for this or that, it’ll be harder, and it’ll be less likely that you do well, and your route towards your goals will become more circuitous.

Desiree333: You sound as though you are not talking about the college and university system in place in the US. The British Isles, Canada, Oz, NZ, Tasmania etc. have a very different arrangement. The French kids have to choose a niche early also, I think.

@galicalled yeah Im in Canada.

@dalloon okay but Im not going to just take random courses, then later find out I need certain pre requisites that I dont have because I just took “the courses that interest me”. Im guessing your in the US, like galicalled said its different in the US from Canada. And your saying its harder to get into College than University? Umm maybe Im wrong but isnt it doctors and lawyers that go to universtiy, and say hairdressers that go to college? I need to have a plan. Sorry but I’m not going to just wing it in high school, picking a career path in grade 12 and finding out I need classes that I never took, then wasting a year of my life earning the credits that I need. You cant honestly tell me that when you were in high school you didnt take the classes you needed for whatever career path you were going to take.

Doctors, lawyers and many other professional degrees are awarded for classes taken after college graduation. Colleges are part of Universities, which may include a number of schools, like law schools, education schools, social work schools, and on and on. College is considered the four years after high school, and you can take courses at a college or at a college within a university, and both are the same.

I was brought up to value a liberal arts education. The purpose of college is not to prepare for a career; it’s to prepare for a life. I got a professional degree after college, but even that was just like more liberal arts. I’ve certainly used things I learned there, but I’ve used so many other things, from so many other fields, that I never would have had, if I had focussed so early.

This is an old discussion—which is better? Liberal arts education, or a specialized education? I’m not sure there is a right answer, and you may be perfectly proper in focussing your education now. I am just trying to say that it isn’t necessary, if you don’t want to freak out about what is important to take now. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you learn how to work hard, and you learn a variety of tools to apply to problems. You also need some generalized knowledge. But tools are much more important than knowledge. You can always get facts from research, or even google. What you can’t always get are the tools to understand and analyze those facts.

What college classes do I need to take to become a social worker??

Read answers above; gailcalled (that would be me) provided a link in the second answer.