wackaflockaflame

I felt compelled to address this comment -- I apologize if it is out of place with respect to this thread's subject matter. I'm currently awaiting a response for the UofT 2-year MSW. I was waitlisted last year. Best of luck to everybody. As for the comment: with all due respect, your logic is absolutely preposterous. For one, psychologists/psychiatrists/etc. apparently do not need to suffer from mental illness(es) themselves to have their professional legitimacy questioned. We need effective clinicians, not clinicians who can merely "identify" with clients. This trend towards oppression-as-currency makes me gag. That professor you described is an anti-oppression expert because he knows more than any putatively "oppressed" people about their oppression. Unlike theory and professional experience, personal experience is not a language that anybody else can understand. A depressed person doesn't necessarily know more about depression than someone who studies it meticulously and who deals with depressed people every day. In fact, depression by its very nature tends to preclude strong self-insight. Granted, though, someone with both personal and professional experience would be more likely to make an incredible clinician, e.g., Marsha Linehan, R. D. Laing. For the record, I'm a "white boy" who was raised for the latter half of my life, along with my sibling, by a single mom's under-100K salary. Both me and my sibling suffer from chronic autoimmune diseases. Being stifled into voicelessness because I'm a "white boy" merely constitutes a reversal of roles, not an elimination of discrimination. Maybe I should just milk the fact that I'm Jewish in my applications, since Jews are historically the most oppressed minority in the world? Or maybe I should actually show some integrity instead? If any programs are obligated to fill diversity quotas, something has gone horribly awry. P.S. Social work is 90% female. Technically, "white boys" are the minority in the field; if anybody should be "benefiting" (*gag*) from this arrangement, it should be white boys. But most men are just too insensitive to want to pursue education in social work, right?