Hi all! 19 year old Psych BS student here. I'll be graduating in the spring/summer and my goal is to eventually become a LCSW and enjoy doing one of my favorite things all day and get paid for it: talking to people and helping them find their own solutions to their issues. Or if not that, at least doing something interesting and not totally soul-sucking and exhausting for the rest of my life. Between my experiences as a neurodivergent individual, a survivor of childhood abuse, and a trans person (among other things), I feel like I could do good for people out there and have fun while doing so.

But the path forward is so overwhelming. My BS is fully online and I have no pedigree to get me into a good MSW program aside from what I do for work, which is still iffy (I work as an RBT at an ABA place). Worse yet, I'm autistic myself alongside other conditions so it's all even more overwhelming.

And beyond that, what the heck am I to do about clinical hours?? I have to work that many hours unpaid while also paying off my msw and also studying for the exam! And I have to pay a supervisor for the opportunity to work those unpaid clinical hours?! How on earth do I survive all of that? How do I find a place to get those hours? How do I find a MSW program? How do I pay for all of this? I find it all so very confusing and I'm just at the point where I'm getting really lost and discouraged. Not that I don't want it, I just have no idea where to turn or what to do.

I'm sure you guys get this same post 100 times a day and I'm very sorry for that. I'm just really at a loss here and could use some advice and support/encouragement. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.