Student group organising is hard and important

It’s been several years since I was an EA student group organiser, so please forgive any part of this post which feels out of touch (& correct me in comments!)

Wow, student group organising is hard.

A few structural things that make it hard to be an organiser:

1. You maybe haven’t had a job before, or have only had kind of informal jobs. So, you might not have learned a lot of stuff about how to accomplish things at work.
2. You’re probably trying to do a degree at the same time, which is hard enough on its own!
3. You don’t have the structure and benefits provided by a regular 9-5 job at an organisation, like:
   1. A manager
   2. An office
   3. Operational support
   4. People you can ask for help & advice
   5. A network
4. You have, at most, a year or so to skill up before you might be responsible for the whole strategy and planning and everything of your group.
5. You have, at most, a couple of years to find a successor to run the group — and that’s true every couple of years!
6. You might not have any written handover material, and might be trying to navigate systems or decisions made by people who you can’t really contact anymore, cos they’ve graduated.
7. You might need to interface with the arcane bureaucracy of a university.
8. You might often feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle against students who really don’t “get it”, or who just don’t show up to things when they said they would, or create drama and infighting, etc.
9. Did I mention that you don’t have a manager? Man, managers are *so* helpful!^[1]

Add all of this up — it’s a very tough job.

But I also think it’s pretty wildly important, and that if you’re in a reasonable position to be an EA student group organiser, you should very seriously consider doing it.

If you’re reading this, you probably know the basic arguments for why it’s important. But in brief:

1. Context: Students are often in a prime position to learn about EA ideas, and consider applying them in their lives. Students are often flexible, idealistic, and on the hunt for what to do after graduation.
2. Track record: Many of the people I am most grateful for and excited to be able to collaborate with in the community first learned about EA via a university group. It’s a huge source of people on the EA survey.

When I was a group organiser, I was so excited and energised by our wins, and so crushed when things didn’t go well. Some of the people I met and collaborated with at that time went on to become very important to me, and I’m very grateful to have known them.

I also think the work I did actually transferred over a decent amount to my work at 80k (e.g. having models of the EA community, what messaging works, and what our target audience is like) — plus, 80k only reached out to me about the role because they met me at an event I attended because I was a group organiser!

I think that if you’re the kind of person who can imagine yourself being a good student group organiser, you should seriously consider giving it a go.

And if you already are one — you’re awesome. I think you’re doing something really hard, and really valuable, and I’m grateful to you!

<3

1. ^{^}

    I feel like all of media is like ‘I hate my boss.’ I know I’ve had a very privileged career so far, but the bosses I have have been universally delightful and caring people who are trying their hardest to help me do my job well.