The thought of social work as a profession is enough to instill in most people the desire to run screaming into the wilderness. Raise your hand if you ever wanted to be a social worker when you grow up. I don’t see any hands at all. This is probably due to two reasons. First, this is a written article, so even if your hands were up, I wouldn’t be able to see them. And second, no one wants to be a social worker. No one. The two students who once thought about it 14 years ago have yet to return from the Ozarks. This is really too bad, considering that we have one of the best schools of social work in the world, the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, with a great 3-2 Program.

I blame the media. The image you probably have of a typical social worker is a self-righteous middle-age white woman who takes a kid away from her big sister because, due to the death of their parents in a tragic accident, the older sister has to struggle to raise her little sister, while the insensitive government is trying to take their farm-unless they could raise $50,000 in a talent show in time. They usually do, and the social worker grudgingly disappears into the sunset until it is time to break up another family.

This is awful, because what kid wants to grow up to be a self-righteous middle-age white woman? We have numerous TV shows to inspire college students to jump through the flaming hoops of Orgo and Physics. We also have numerous shows to direct young minds towards legal careers. The only social worker present anywhere is Maxine from Judging Amy.

This perpetuates misconceptions about social workers and thus leads people to look upon us with a mixture of awe and pity, much like the way we look upon kindergarten teachers, disc jockeys of Country-Western stations, and Michael Jackson. Worse, it prevents students from considering a career that is both interesting and lucrative.

OK, maybe “lucrative” is not exactly the most accurate description of social work. We do, after all, have a cardinal rule about dating at GWB: social workers can’t date other social workers, because it perpetuates the cycle of poverty among social workers, and our mission is to alleviate poverty.

While the field may not snag you a mansion with a pool by any means, the work itself compensates plenty in other ways. One misconception people have is that all social workers are like Maxine. Ha! The field of social work is incredibly varied. I am actually studying MACRO social work. In fact, I’m interested in international macro social work, dealing with big issues like policies for sustainable rural community development and for effective prevention of child prostitution in various countries, etc.

Those sound cool, right? Unfortunately for everyone, people just don’t realize what is possible in the field of social work. This is why I am going to write to David E. Kelley and pitch him this idea for a show next fall. It’s called “MSW” and revolves around the activities of a social work agency.

Pilot episode: Vick, a young, charismatic guy finally at dinner admits to his Asian parents that he is-gasp!-a social worker and not a lawyer like they thought, causing the parental units to run screaming into the wilderness. In the first episode, the agency sends Vick to the UNDP office in Vietnam to organize a microfinance program to help impoverished farmers in the Mekong Delta start small businesses. Meanwhile, back at the agency, Caroline, the Executive Director, is preparing to testify before Congress to push Individual Development Accounts (IDA’s) for the poor.

What, you don’t think that would make a good show? That’s just the pilot. In the subsequent episodes, we delve more into the character of the protagonists. For instance, Vick falls madly for another social worker while working in Vietnam; can their love survive against the cardinal rule? In another episode, the agency struggles to overcome its own biases in terms of diversity as one of its social workers admits that she is-gasp!-Republican.

In the season finale, the parental units return from the wilderness and admit that helping people improve their socioeconomic status so that they can afford a good doctor is just as important as being a doctor-and thus not a shame to the ancestors.

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