Happy Holidays from Pass the ASWB Exam

Happy Holidays from Pass the ASWB Exam! Here's a holiday-themed Eye on Ethics column about how to handle gifts from clients. It begins:

Raise your hand if a client has offered you a gift. That social work club has lots of members, especially this time of year. Did you accept the gift or politely refuse it because you thought accepting the gift might complicate the boundaries in your professional-client relationship?

However you handle clients gifts (in reality or on the exam), here's to a happy season. Take care. Next year, you're licensed!

Virtual Study Group

Check out PTAE's new Pinterest group board: ASWB Exam Prep. Write to join in, then post whatever you think will help people see a PASS result on the social work licensing exam. Certain material lends itself to visual learning--especially anything you can throw into a chart. That means the various developmental theories (Freud, Erikson, Piaget, etc.)...the clusters of personality disorders in the DSM...all that jazz. Also, as ever, links to helpful sites (this one, for instance).

Come for the infographics, stay for the exam passing! See you there.

Social Work Exam Practice Gets Less Expensive

The spending that it takes to get to becoming a licensed social worker can be daunting, if not downright overwhelming at times. School + fees + more fees + not getting paid much = grief. Happily, exam prep itself just got cheaper. SWTP has introduced their third ASWB practice exam, and along with it, a three-exam bundle that brings SWTP's usual per-exam price down from an already-low $35 all the way to $30. Hard to beat!

You can also put SWTP test prep on your holiday list by sharing this PayPal Gift Certificate URL with caring, cheerleading loved ones.

Happy Holidays and good luck with the exam!

Mindfulness and the Social Work Exam

Mindfulness meditation may be something you're already recommending to your clients for all kinds of symptom relief. But are you practicing mindfulness yourself? There's good reason to--not just to relieve test anxiety and the general sense of overwhelm that can hit when you're prepping for the licensing exam. See Mindfulness Can Aid in Focus and Working Memory. Mindfulness ed and practice were studied. The result:

[S]cores indicated that the mindfulness group significantly improved on both the verbal GRE test and the working memory capacity test. They also mind-wandered less during testing.

What works for the GRE should work for the ASWB exams (LCSW, LMSW, etc), right? Big, vexing, standardized tests take lots of focus, verbal skills, and working memory. So, good reason to get to it. And so what if it helps you be more calm, centered, and all that other good stuff?

Here are some free mindfulness resources on the web to get you started:

• UCLA Free Guided Meditation
• Tara Brach Guided Meditation
• Video Guided Meditation Search

Breathe, half-smile, and get licensed!  Good luck.

ASWB Exam Prep in Pictures

A quick drawing of your attention to yet another way to prep for the ASWB exam. Need a break from practice tests and podcasts? Check out Pass the ASWB Exam on Pinterest. In addition to links back here, there are collections of helpful stuff, including lots of material just right for visual learners. Freudian theory as iceberg. Personality disorders as mini-chart. That sort of thing. Check it out, follow, repin...enjoy!

LCSW Exam Prep

Once upon a time, you had to buy expensive packages full of CDs and books to hope to approach the LCSW exam with confidence. That's changed. Now, all you need is an Internet connection, some time to do some reading and take some practice exams, and maybe a touch of common, social work sense.

The web is overflowing with the very stuff that pricy exam prep CDs and books are filled with. The side bar of this blog has a short list of links to some essentials--the NASW Code of Ethics, the DSM, etc. Throw in some basics about human development and various theories and--given enough exposure to practice questions (like those at SWTP)--you can consider yourself ready to go get licensed.

That is to say, your LCSW exam prep doesn't have to wear your down emotionally or financially. Passing the exam is a big part of your career. Getting there isn't necessarily going to be half the fun, but it doesn't have to be joy-free either.  This goes for future LMSWs, LICSWs, LSWs, and all the rest too!

Here are some additional sweet spots on the web worth checking out as you head toward the licensing exam--ethics, study tips, flash cards.

• Eye on Ethics at Social Work Today
• NASW Ethical Dilemma of the Month (change the number in the URL to crawl through the series)
• Study Tips at Social Work Test Prep
• LCSW Flash Cards at Cram.com

And, because all of this still might rough you up a little, here's this:

• Self-Care Starter Kit

Take care and good luck!

NASW Code of Ethics and the Social Work Exam

The NASW Code of Ethics is central to the social work licensing exam and should probably be central to your test prep. If you're the gambling and time-wasting type, you might experiment with taking exam studying nothing but the Code of Ethics.  Whether or not you that appeals to you, here's something that might: Underway at Social Work Test Prep's blog, a section by section examination of the Code, the ways you might expect to encounter it on the exam, and strategies for getting Code questions answered right. A little bit like our KSA of the Day series. Enjoy!