Stephanie Rosado, MSW is a PhD student in the USF School of Social Work. In this episode, Stephanie and Chris discuss self-discovery in the face of adversity and contributing to society through social work.
Stephanie is a Certified Wellness & Health Coach whose research interests involve young adult populations diagnosed with osteoarthritis, the disease’s biopsychosocial impact, and research that focuses on advancing the field of sport social work.
Learn more about the USF School of Social Work's PhD program here.
Learn more about the USF School of Social Work here.
Chris Groeber: Hi. I’m Chris Groeber, and I’m an associate in research at the University of South Florida’s College of Behavioral and Community Sciences School of Social Work. Welcome to the Remark-a-bull podcast.
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Chris: Hello, listeners and welcome to our next Remark-a-Bull podcast. I'm excited today to bring you this bright light of a person who is working on her PhD, who is fairly far down the path of doing this, her name is Stephanie Rosado. Stephanie and I have kind of known each other for the past .. since she's been at USF and I've kind of been watching her journey and guys I want to share with you, I think her journey is really one I'm excited for you guys to hear about. So, Stephanie, we'll just plod on into it. Tell me how you got to this place in your career that a lot of people dream of getting to and they just never quite get there.
Stephanie Rosado: Yeah, thank you so much Chris, and thank you for having me. Well, let us get right into it. What led me to a PhD in social work? Let me just tell you that it was an interesting process. You're right, I never thought I would be here but it was a lot of ups and downs, a lot of failures, a lot of re-directions, that kind of led me to this point. I recently talked about my journey in a TED talk I just gave for TEDx Bradenton, but basically, I came from an urban city of a minoritized population, I'm a Latina who came up in a minoritized neighborhood. My dream was just to freaking go to college, right?
Chris: Right.
Stephanie: I never thought a PhD was even in the books for me. So, I always valued education, and guess what, my family didn't have the money to pay for that education. So I had to identify a way out of my circumstances and sports was one of those ways. So I picked up a basketball, I worked really hard, I sucked at first, I was terrible, but worked really at it and eventually got offered a Division 1 scholarship! I went on to college on a full-ride Division 1 scholarship. That kind of jump started my college and professional career as a professional athlete, obviously. Then injury happened and identity crisis happened.
Chris: Right, right.
Stephanie: Mental health issues happened and I had to give up the sport that I knew, that I identified with, and I lost everything. I really lost everything. At that time I was going through a lot of life transitions as well, personal transitions. I was scrambling to find a way to do something else. Like, what am I if I'm not an athlete? I didn't know what I was.
Chris: Right.
Stephanie: I didn't know how else to identify. So I tried a lot of different things during that time; I went back to school for a couple different things and then at the end of the day I had to do some reflection say, “what do I really want to do?” I was like, “I want to help some people, people like me, you know, like myself and stuff,” so I decided to pursue my master's in social work. Then that kind of led me to sports social work, which I had no idea existed. “You mean I can help athletes who went through the same thing that I did and it’s kind of like or use sports to help communities?”
Chris: Absolutely, yes.
Stephanie: Like sports helped me get to college. So then when I got involved with the Alliance of Social Workers in Sports and sports social work, it was a relatively new field and I started to think, “well how do you grow a field? How does a field actually become a thing?” and guess what? Research, research came up. To expand a field you have to have more research on that topic and that was the key. I was like, “oh I could get a Ph.D. and focus on things that I'm interested in!”
Chris: Wow.
Stephanie: Like sports social work and other issues that I'm passionate about. So that's how I got here. (Laughs)
Chris: Woah, wow, I mean, you know I talked about this podcast and every one of you has talked about the fact that learning has been a coping mechanism for you at some point or time in your journey and isn’t that comforting to know that learning makes you more resilient? I mean, so you go through this identity crisis. How old were you when you were going through all that? When you were trying to decide who were and how you identified? Talk a little about ages and stages and where you were when you were like, “oh my god I'm no longer a basketball player.”
Stephanie: So, I think when I had my first had my big major surgery, I’m talking about double knee-reconstruction surgery that ultimately needed my career, right? I think I was early 20s, like 21, 22 around there.
Chris: Wow.
Stephanie: And I continued to try to play and continue to make things happen and my professional career ended around, I want to say like 24, around there.
Chris: Very early on.
Stephanie: Twenty-four, twenty-five ... yeah, yeah like I was considered a young. Like that's your prime during that age. So going through that identity crisis; I was in my mid-twenties and that crisis continued for years. It wasn't like, “oh I went through a little month where I was struggling.” This was years of identity crisis and trying to figure myself out. Probably almost ... I would say I'm still figuring out who I am and I'm okay with that.
Chris: Aren't we all, I mean yeah that's the trick, become okay with the fact that we're all still be coming.
Stephanie: Yep, yep, yep. So that’s kind of the stages right there. So for those of you that are in your twenties or even thirties still listening, like, “it's okay, we're still all figuring it out.” (Laughs.)
Chris: Well, I’ll tell you in my fifties I'm still figuring it out, but I'm enjoying the journey because I'm embracing what I don't know. You know? That's part of it. I'm not afraid of it because I use learning as a coping mechanism, I learn about it and guess what, it's not as scary.
Stephanie: Yeah and I love that you mentioned that about learning as a coping mechanism. I guess I never ... until you said that I never really verbalized it or thought about it in that way, but you're so right. We struggle with things because we don't know what they are.
Chris: Right.
Stephanie: Or we can't understand it, we can't comprehend it, we can't make it make sense in our head, and so that's when it becomes scary, when we don't know. But when we're able to learn about our experiences, our vulnerabilities, our struggles, and really understand them and put them into context, in to context with our upbringing, our culture, with you know, connecting the dots. That's when we're able to bring meaning into our lives right?
Chris: Absolutely.
Stephanie: And make sense of the world.
Chris : Well, and isn't that what we're all in search of is making sense of the world? I think one of the special things about social work for me is it's not just about making sense of the world but it's making sense of how I can contribute to helping other people maximize their potential and where I fit in that.
Stephanie: Most definitely, yes.
Chris: I feel like that for me and my career ... if I can do that what a great blessing. So tell me a little bit about your MSW and how you went on that journey because a lot of folks are sitting there, thinking about getting an MSW or have an MSW, and wonder what's next. So talk a little about that season of your life.
Stephanie: To be completely transparent and blunt and honest, I went into the MSW thinking I want to help people. I didn't know exactly how but I knew social work was a profession. I looked up the what ethics and values of social work were and I'm like, “yeah, this is exactly what I want to do or kind of like what I want to contribute to society, or how I want to contribute to society,” but didn't really know what I was getting into, honestly. So when I got into my MSW program through the University of Southern California, it was that learning experience. Again, we come back to learning outside, wow, and I was relating all this stuff that I was learning to my own experiences. Even, you know, when you get into those DSM classes, and those clinical classes, you start diagnosing yourself and your family members.
Chris: (Laughs.) Yeah! It's amazing how pathological everybody becomes at that point in time.
Stephanie: Yeah, so I was just having all these revelations. I was really excited about it and then clinical internship happened, right? And to be completely transparent again, clinical internship scared the heck out of me. It scared me away from wanting to do clinical work because wasn't ... in the placement that I was at, I didn't necessarily have the support that I needed, which was unfortunate, right? I went through that period and just kind of gritted it out ... “just let me finish my MSW and I’0ll figure it out afterward.” But through that lack of support, I gained a lot of skills. I was able to learn what I was capable of doing and that I was able to handle tough things and tough situations and still be able to help people, but it scared me away from the clinical route. So I worked in child welfare after my MSW, more of, like, providing direct services but not at that clinical level.
Chris: Right, right, right.
Stephanie: But all that clinical knowledge was extremely helpful in the child welfare system.
Chris: Absolutely.
Stephanie: So then, I was still trying to figure out how to incorporate sport in social work and get back to that, which I was introduced to during my MSW as well, and then that research component came back and I went, “I want to go get my PhD and be more involved with research.” So that's kind of how that happened and now I’ve kind of rekindled that clinical flame and that's one of my goals. I'm hoping that next year, or when I get close to finishing my dissertation, that I can start gaining hours toward clinical licensure, because I can see the need for evidence-based practice and also practice-informed research, too.
Chris: You said so many things just now that resonate with me about our program. While it's a clinical program, I think there's a mindset about clinical that ... I don't know that we do a good enough job of articulating how clinical can be a wide berth of things; it doesn't necessarily mean a fifty-minute- hour and hanging out a shingle that says, you know, “Stephanie LCSW.” Think about with me, for just a second, about how much your clinical ... the knowledge you gained from that really impacts your ability just to deal in the world -- in the boardroom or, like you said, child welfare. You know, people think that child welfare and clinical are completely oxymoronic and that they're mutually exclusive and I keep saying to folks, “no, no, no, we need good clinical case managers inside child welfare that can understand where people are coming from.”
Stephanie: Yes, that clinical knowledge was so valuable to me. When I'm understanding a family system and how best to service a family who may be struggling with substance abuse, or how to do wrap-around services for a parent who may be struggling with substance abuse, or a different family member that may have a different depressive issue, or whatever it is -- it is so important to have that understanding on how to help them cope and deal.
Chris: The knowledge of trauma ... you mention your identity crisis if you will, you know that was traumatic, that knee injury was real-life trauma. People say, “uh it's a knee injury,” but no, it was trauma for you right?
Stephanie: Yes, yes, you hit the nail on the head with that. It was traumatic, not only because it stripped me from my identity, but I went through other issues which kind of leads me to why I'm so passionate about my dissertation topic. Let me just say what I'm interested in with my dissertation topic, and then ill wrap it back around. My dissertation interest is looking at osteoarthritis, or OA for short, and its effect on the quality of life with special attention given to younger adult populations. I was diagnosed with OA in my early twenties, people usually think of that as an older person's disease and they don't really think of younger people having that disease. I was not only stripped of my identity, I couldn't do daily tasks. Walking up the steps hurt, working out became a burden, kneeling down, TMI ... too much information ... but going to ... sitting on the toilet was painful. So as a young adult, I was not only stripped of my identity, but other quality-of-life areas really became traumatic for me and losing ... losing those things in my life was really what led to depression, anxiety, and things of that nature.
Chris: Of course.
Stephanie: But it's based on the trauma aspect of having an injury like that.
Chris: Well, you know, I think there's such intersectionality we don't talk about it enough, between our physical health and our emotional health. It becomes kind of a chicken-and-the-egg argument, but think about how your physical health begets depression. Your living expertise is really about intersectionality of your primary health and your emotional health.
Stephanie: Yeah and even ... so one thing I'm focusing specifically on with my dissertation is social-role participation, and so think about important roles you identify with, right? How would a disease potentially impact that? If you're a parent of a young child and all of a sudden they develop this chronic illness that doesn't have a cure and now you feel like you can't parent in the way you want to. You can’t play with your children the way you want to or maybe you can't be the wife/husband/partner you that you want to be because of certain limitation or whatever it is. It's that intersectional piece and how chronic illness can definitely inflate traumatic experiences and can also intersect with other areas of your life, for sure.
Chris: I mean it's so simple in one sense and what you've just said normalizes, I think, for a lot of people, people who do have some sort of chronic illness, of course, you're going to be depressed. Of course, you're going to have these behavioral responses to what you're experiencing and I think sometimes really just naming it really helps people.
Stephanie: Yes, again, learning as a coping mechanism. (Laughs)
Chris: Yeah.
Stephanie: Right.
Chris: I mean it's profound to me and I know I keep beating that whole idea, but I really do think innately we're built to learn as human beings.
Stephanie: Yeah, I resonate with that a lot so I definitely appreciate ... and, like I said, I never thought about it that way, but it definitely it has been the case for me that I use learning and continuing my education and continuing to be a student of life as a way to cope with life, itself.
Chris: Alright, so looking at yourself now in this point in time and our collective history, how would you say you identify? We talked about how you identified early on. How is your ... how you identify evolved?
Stephanie: That an interesting question, I would say that I've always been a loud and proud Latina, a Puerto Rican and that's always been there.
Chris: Right, right.
Stephanie: But as far as how I identify otherwise, I just think it's ... I will never identify the same way. In five years I’ll probably identify a little bit different, I’ll probably hold a different role, be in a different position in my life and I think it's just ... I feel like just wear so many hats, I have my hands in so many pots that I don't really know how I can put that into a sentence. I always identify with kind of traits, like I'm a hard worker, I'm very gritty, I'm a Latina, I am resilient, I'm outspoken I am ... so that's kind of how I identify a little bit. I'm a social worker, right? I'm a researcher, right now, in this stage of my life I can say that I'm a social worker, I'm a researcher, I'm an academic, but I think it'll just continue to change.
Chris: Just so you know, not everybody gets to do a TEDx talk. So I think one of those adjectives has got to be, inspirational, from the standpoint of you can go from a crumpled-up mess on the basketball floor to having this discussion right now and that journey is completely possible, it’s feasible, and it’s actually, it's all doable and I love that about your story. Equate whatever trauma you want to that experience on the basketball court, we all have those in our lives, but there's a whole story of coming back from that and becoming something different because of it. So, like, if you're going to give advice to potential students whether that be BSW, MSW, or PhD, what are you going to say?
Stephanie: Don't be afraid to fail. Like, fail forward.
Chris: You win or you learn, you know. If you're willing to learn, then you win.
Stephanie: Yes, yes. I think that's my biggest piece of advice. Anyone that knows me knows that I will try my hardest, even when I know something is hard, and that I'm not afraid to ask questions. I'm not afraid to be the person that asks the question in the room. Everyone can be like, “oh is that a silly question to ask?” No, I’d rather be well informed and ask the question than to make a mistake because I didn't ask the question.
Chris: Alright so talk just briefly, let's get specific ... so your experience at USF, talk about what that was like ... is like for you right now, you're kind of in a different role. But talk a little bit about what your experience has been at USF.
Stephanie: I'm so grateful for my experience at USF and I'm not saying just because I'm here and I feel like I have to (laughs). I'm very honest.
Chris: (Laughs.) Yeah.
Stephanie: I'm very honest and you know when you're researching PhD programs or doctoral programs, you hear a lot of horror stories, to be quite honest.
Chris: Yeah, it's a hard time.
Stephanie: Yeah, I reached out to many students before my decision to pursue a PhD and I heard a lot of terrible things or terrible experiences. I heard a lot of good experiences too, right, and I was prepared for all the bad stuff in my head. I'm like, “okay if this happens, this is how we're going to handle it,” kind of thing. I was preparing for that and when I got here it was completely not that. Like, is it hard? Yes, but my experiences in the USF School of Social Work PhD program had been supportive, has been an open door policy with all faculty including, you know, my committee. I feel blessed in that sense that I really came into a PhD program that really supports the individual and looks at me like an individual and are not just trying to pump out academics or make it so hard that you fail. Everything has just been so supportive and I feel encouraged to do well. I feel encouraged to finish. I feel like people are rooting for me.
Chris: We are. I mean I always say to folks, we worked really hard as social workers when we were your age and we busted hump trying to make things, and we did ... we're not where we want to be so you guys ... I think the world even now is more complex than it was when I was out knocking on doors and working with families ... you guys have to be better, faster, smarter, stronger, but the cool thing is that you are (laughs). I mean in my interactions with you all, you talk about it being a blessing for you, but I will tell you you're encouraging people like me who realize, I think, the value of coming into the classroom and having discussions and teaching because you press us to think in ways that maybe we haven't before and so I wanted to tell how much I appreciate, you know, the fact that you are willing to as the question, you are willing to press us on what we know or what we don't know. So I don't ever want you to lose that zest because I think it makes us all better.
Stephanie: Aww, thank you! I love it, see that's why I say that I've had a great experience.
Chris: Well knowing the intent of the director of that program, she really, Sondra, Dr. Sonrda Fogel really does want to support you all. I mean in her heart of hearts, that's what she wants more than anything is for you guys to maximize the potential and you have.
Stephanie: Yeah, she has been our number one supporter, cheerleader, pusher. I mean yeah we get feedback and papers back with all red ink and we're like, “why, why, why, why?” and we feel so frustrated at times, but she's pushing us to be better, right, and at the end of the day she has been our number one fan I think for all the PhD students in the program.
Chris: Well (laughs), and you and I talked about this, sometimes it takes ego strength to be an adult waiting on a grade because you think, “oh my god,” life is happening all around you, you're paying the bills and people raise children and they're trying to maintain their relationships I mean all the adult things and then to be worried about a stupid grade. You know, I think you find yourself in that position and it does make you question why I'm doing what I'm doing and it's nice to know ... I don't know if you relate to that at all is that?
Stephanie: Oh yeah, uh huh. I just had a conversation with a colleague in the PhD program yesterday like, “we're choosing to put ourselves through this suffering.” (Laughs.)
Chris: Yeah.
Stephanie: Yeah and you know it is a sacrifice you know, honestly. If anyone's listening and considering a PhD program, it’s a sacrifice, it is. You willingly put yourself through a PhD program and there's some guilt associated with that. You're not making a salary like you would if you were out in the field working. You know there's a sacrifice to your family, there's a sacrifice of your time to spend with loved ones and others. But I guess the thing that keeps me going is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I'm going to come out better after all this is done. So I definitely resonate with what you just said.
Chris: Well as I'm kind of bringing this to a close, I wanted to tell you that though you may not be shooting from the half-court line or from free throw line and hearing the fans scream in the background, you do have a whole different set of fans now that I think you are gaining as you're going through this program and I mean people that are rooting for you and that really want this for you just like you want it for you. So I'm just thankful, Stephanie, that you took the time to sit down with us and talk about this, but really be honest because, you're right, a lot of people aren't honest both good and bad, and I really appreciate you sharing that. Any parting shots of wisdom, final thoughts before we close out here for people that are listening and considering sitting where you're sitting?
Stephanie: First of all, I love all the sports analogies Chris, good job, and (laughs) I guess my parting words ... I’ll just refer back to continue to be a student of life, a student of the game, the game of life, but also continue to ask questions and continue to ask those hard questions. For anyone in any field considering any program, whether it’s the MSW, BSW, whatever, ask those questions and don't be afraid to ask questions. That would be my parting words because I think I really value that and I live by that.
Chris: Well, I'm thankful you're as fearless as you are and I think your ability to articulate that fearlessness is particularly resonating with me. So I just want to thank you for taking this time, Stephanie, and let you know that I think a lot of people are going to really relate to where you are and where you've been and you're an encouragement. So thank you for that and I look forward to seeing Dr. Stephanie Rosado on your monicker and on your business card here very, very soon. Thank you.
Stephanie: Oh, thank you. I can't wait either. (Laughs).