Tom Sherlock’s path from substance abuse to social work
When Tom Sherlock receives his degree in social work from Utah State University in May, a 27-year journey will come to an end. Sherlock’s path to a bachelor’s degree began in 1997 after he graduated from Logan High School. Soon after his enrollment, Sherlock thought college wasn’t the right path for him to pursue.
“I tried doing a couple of classes, and I just couldn’t get to classes, couldn’t finish homework and couldn’t figure out what was wrong,” Sherlock said. “I wasn’t in itself a place of self-actualization. I tried again two more times over the course of the next 20 years, but I couldn’t finish it.”
Sherlock subsequently stopped taking classes but remained in Logan and was working as a medical assistant at Logan Regional Hospital during 2020 when a desire to go back to school emerged.
“COVID was an extremely stressful time for me and my family because I was working at the hospital and coming home to a medically fragile son,” Sherlock said. “2020 was also the year when I noticed a lot of division in the country. I’ve always been working jobs where I wanted to help people, but I didn’t know there was a helping profession, and social work is a helping profession. That was when I realized I wanted to go back to school.”
After discovering he wanted to pursue a degree in social work at Utah State, Sherlock realized he needed to make significant changes in his own life before he could enroll in school again.
“While I was working at the hospital, I developed a substance abuse disorder. I was a mess. I was no good for myself and no good for my family,” Sherlock said. “Part of coming back to school was not just that I was seeing stuff on TV, part of it was that I knew I couldn’t fix the stuff that I saw on TV until I wasn’t part of the problem.”
Sherlock proceeded to voluntarily check himself into a rehab facility in Cache Valley, where he recovered from the effects of substance abuse and addressed some underlying mental health issues previously untreated. After receiving treatment and being accepted into the social work program, Sherlock was still skeptical about his ability to succeed as a non-traditional student.
“I was 42 at the time and older than everyone else,” Sherlock said. “I didn’t know if this old dog could learn new tricks.”
As it turns out, this one could. Sherlock was recognized for his work in the classroom and was named the Social Work Student of the Year. While at USU, Sherlock has applied many of the principles he learned in the classroom to improve himself and his relationships with his wife and three kids, two of whom have been diagnosed with autism.
“We’re a unique family, having two kids with disabilities, and you have to learn how to educate your kids in different ways,” Sherlock said. “Being able to go through the social work program has given me a lot of information that I could use personally as a father too. I didn’t really see that coming when I went back to school, but it was cool to learn.”
Sherlock also expressed gratitude for having opportunities to learn outside of the traditional classroom. Sherlock attended Social Work Day on the Hill during the Utah Legislative Session where he met with the Utah chapter of the National Association of Social Workers and discussed the impact proposed legislation would have on the profession.
During Sherlock’s time at Utah State, he also attended different mental health conferences where he had the opportunity to meet and network with other social workers.
“Now I’m prepared with this new information going forward, which is rad, but the cool thing is that I got to rub elbows with other people,” Sherlock said. “What really changes me personally by going to these conferences is that I’m out there living it. I’m doing it. I’m a social worker, and I’m rubbing shoulders with other social workers.”
After graduation, Sherlock plans to attend graduate school online at Tulane University while also working as a substance abuse counselor at the same rehab facility he graduated from four years ago.
Sherlock’s favorite memory from his time at Utah State was seeing the Aggies’ men’s basketball team defeat the University of New Mexico to win the regular season Mountain West championship. But unlike the same orange and gold seats in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum present when Tom Sherlock first stepped on campus as a student in 1997, he will graduate from Utah State changed forever.
“I came into the university feeling like a broken human being,” Sherlock said. “But I was treated as an individual that had a lot of potential energy stored in him. Because I was treated that way, I was mentored enough to be able to turn that into kinetic energy and start a career in social work.”