Charlotte Darnell
https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/community-health/team
Hey @Kestrel🔸 , If an event happens in the UK, feel free to send me a message, and if I'm available, then I'd happy to be the community contact/support person for the event. (If that's what you mean by 'participant welfare'). Or I can recommend some other people to reach out to if I can't make it.
Context - I'm on the Community Health team at CEA and have been the contact person for events many times :))
Thanks for posting this - I certainly relate to something similar. But, it seems like you've taken a step in asking for support, so that's a great start :))
Do you have a sense at all of what might be blocking you, or if/why you've felt blocked on similar things before?
I'll share a few thoughts that might help based on my experience - they're not groundbreaking, but maybe just reading them might help name what's going on.
If you're feeling overwhelmed...
Does it feel like 'EAG followups' is a big amorphous task?
Try breaking things down into smaller, manageable chunks. I sometimes make two lists:
Then stop there. Making the list is one task. Starting on items is tomorrow's task. Sometimes just knowing what to do next helps me get over the hump.
You could just go through each 1-1 or session you went to and think about what followups might be good there and then prioritise them. If the tasks themselves seem big, like 'finish updated work plan' can you make them smaller? like fill in x section, send imperfect draft to a friend, look at comments from reviewer etc.
If something else is blocking you, maybe sit with the feeling for a bit and see what comes up? Common culprits for me after conferences in the past:
Practical things that might help?
Good luck with your next steps, Onyekachi!
Thank you for writing this up!
One thing I'd be curious about is how much the members engage, and have context / more deeply held takes on things they vote on. And particularly if you have thoughts or ideas on how to cultivate deeper engagement.
I think my personal taste in the past was more towards organisations being run this way, but after attending a large general assembly for a (non-EA) charity group I was part of, I was really disappointed with how shallowly or completely not engaged people were with what they were voting on. From memory, I think the decisions that got made were much less cohesive and more random than I think they would have been with another setup, which is something I expect EAs would want to avoid.
First, thank you for being so vulnerable in sharing this experience. At least for me, your description of rejection feeling a bit like grief really resonated, it can feel so gutting.
Making it to the top 3 out of 168 applicants sounds genuinely impressive. I’m glad the org told you, and that it’s meant a lot to you. While it might not feel like much consolation right now, it clearly demonstrates that your skills and experience are competitive in this space.
There are some practical tips I could give, like
However, I think for me personally it’s been important to do a bit of sitting with the pain of rejections rather than jumping to practical things straight away. I’ve also found reading about others’ experiences has helped the rejection feel a bit less lonely - some posts about rejection that I’ve especially appreciated are Louisa & Lizka’s ‘Rejection thread: stories and tips’, and Aaron’s Recovering from Rejection.
All that said, I mostly just want to say I’m so sorry it didn’t work out this time, and that that understandably feels really painful. Well done for giving it your all, I’m rooting for you finding some next steps that feel good, and that put the talents you evidently have to good use.
(Also - I’d advise putting more detail in the title, e.g. ‘advice on rejection’ or something. I expect more people will see it and give advice that way)
This seems like great advice about how to maximise EAGs! I do think many attendees, not just students, should prepare more ideally.
If you happen to be a particularly anxious or perfectionist person, please don't panic if you can't spend 15-20 hours on this in the next 10 days (or before any EAG). It's great that Sam included the bit about ratios if you're time constrained - try to take that to heart and do some prep rather than doing no prep because you feel overwhelmed. People who do less prep still often get a lot of value out of EAG.
It's good to push yourself a to get the most out of EAG that you can, just be sensible about what the 'you can' bit means for you, so that it doesn't come at the cost of
- being absolutely shattered and unable to attend on the Sunday
- being so tired that you have meaningfully worse conversations as a result, or accidentally hurt someone's feelings
- missing important uni deadlines
- being overly caffeinated and feeling unwell or very anxious
- whatever the failure mode might be for you
Lots of different factors might mean you want to pace yourself at EAG a bit more, perhaps if you're more introverted, if you're operating in a second language you don't normally spend all day in, if you've got family responsibilities, (mental) health stuff, or you're jet lagged.
But yeah, overall I think it's really good advice that a lot of maximising EAG is in the prep, and glad this post is out there. Thanks for writing this, Sam!