Amy Kendziorski '10, Healthy Family Center

Mission trips, friends with leukemia, international experiences, and volunteering opportunities…these are just a few experiences that have led me to choose the field of social work.  I have always loved to work with people, and although there are many fields in which I would have been able to do so, social work was like a calling for me.  I knew not only that I loved working with people, but I loved helping them as well.  I went to Jamaica on a mission trip and absolutely fell in love with the work I was doing, and the culture I had experienced.  They had to drag me back onto the plane after our two weeks were up.  I knew right then and there that service work was what I had a calling to do as not only a profession, but as a vocation.

            Shortly after coming back from Jamaica, a friend of mine who had been diagnosed with leukemia less than a year previously, passed away.  She was an amazing person, an inspiration to my entire school system.  I remain close with her family, and in talking with them about what they went through as her cancer progressed, I realized how much they needed someone like a social worker to help the coping process, and prepare them for what lay ahead.  This made me want to go into a profession where I would be able to be that person for them, and for other families who might be going through a similar experience…once again, all arrows pointed to social work.

After deciding on Saint Mary’s College, I was flipping through the course guide, and reading up on each of the different majors that Saint Mary’s has to offer.  Social work fit my description perfectly.  I began taking social work courses first semester of my freshman year, and fell in love with everything about the field.  I was already excited to become a senior and get my placement.  I decided to study abroad my sophomore year in Ireland for the entire academic school year, and fell in love with the culture and the people.  I have always had a drive to travel, and I had an idea that I would like to live abroad doing social work, and this experience just reaffirmed that fact.

Being in my field placement now at the Healthy Family Center, I know I am doing what I love.  I am still very new at everything, but I am eager to learn and apply what I have been studying over the course of the last few years into my fieldwork.  I am excited to see what they rest of the year holds for me, along with everything this field has in store for me in the future.  I hope to work on an international level someday, working with individuals and families, opening my eyes to various cultures and customs, another passion I have developed over the past few years.  Social work gives me the freedom to apply the different things I love; travel, people, service, and so on.  This is why social work is for me.