Hello! My name is Garrett, and I am from Seattle, Washington. I have been involved in EA for about a year and was introduced to it by my closest friend while at school. He and I have both always been directly involved in humanitarian aid projects around the world for most of our lives (it’s how we met, actually), and after returning from a service trip in Lesbos where he had been shaken by the suicide of a small child there he began to wonder about the effectiveness of his efforts. This then put him on the road to finding EA. When he ran across it, he shared it with me, and I immediately fell in love with everything about EA. I was the director of the university’s service department at the time and was responsible for activities involving hundreds of students, and was frustrated with what I perceived to be inefficient and ineffective university policies governing funding and activity options. EA was simply too relatable to pass up. I’ve been heavily involved ever since, although my schooling has prevented me from attending many of the conferences that I wish to attend one day in order to make more of your acquintances. Until then, I am happily engaged in furthering the EA chapter here at my university in Idaho.
The causes I currently care about the most within EA are animal welfare and biosecurity (although I pretty much love every other cause area within EA as well).
I was raised hunting and was always taught that animals were for my use, and before knowing EA I consumed inordinate amounts of meat (I kickboxed and for several years was a competitive weight lifter). There was a period of 4 months where, in order to reach a certain physique within the required time frame, I consumed 220g of animal-based protein per day on a 1700 calorie diet (I developed some minor health issues, as could be expected). It wasn’t until I attended an EA online training seminar for group leaders that a compelling argument for a vegetarian lifestyle was made by a fellow EA member, Pete Rowlett (I hope he doesn’t mind me mentioning him here), that I decided to become vegan. His arguments, combined with the EA reading material I was familiarizing myself with, along with certain verses from my religious texts, all combined to convince me that I needed to change my eating lifestyle. I am currently trying to start our university’s first Animal Welfare movement in tandem with our EA chapter, and am also preparing presentations on animal welfare to give at our EA retreats that we are planning. It hasn’t been easy switching lifestyles cold-turkey like that, and I have slipped up on the rare occasion, but I have found it well worth the effort (weight loss has never been so easy) and don’t plan on going back. I will add, however, that my university has a culture of meat consumption, and my new lifestyle has turned away some interested romantic partners. That was an unforeseen and difficult hurdle to overcome. Anyways...
As for biosecurity, I am in my university’s premedical program and have always had a deep interest in international relations as well as biotechnology/biomedicine/etc. After reading “Biological Threats of the 21st Century”, I found myself drawn to this cause area that I hadn’t even known existed! I have studied Chinese since I was 10 years old and lived in Asia for a couple of years doing humanitarian aid, and the tense peace between the island of Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party, and the US always unnerved me. Biosecurity as a cause area was the perfect blend for me of IR and Biotech, and I found an amazing niche for “biosecurity in China” within EA. This combination of all my deepest intellectual interests was yet again too strong of a pull for me to ignore, and now I find myself attempting to organize our university’s Biosecurity in Asia society, contributing to online forums regarding Chinese biosecurity, and doing other various projects associated with biosecurity and our university, etc.
I plan on becoming a medical doctor so that I can “earn to give”, and I hope to eventually transition from medicine to working full-time on biosecurity policy in the United States (preferably related to China somehow, and hopefully done in direct association with EA). Fun facts about me are I like reading/writing, movies, debate, poetry, and art (and I am not too bad at playing Battlefront II online, either). I have four siblings, one of whom has been in Mexico doing humanitarian aid for 6 months now and I hope to persuade him to participate actively in EA. My family has not been very open to the ideas proposed by EA and I am having a difficult time convincing them to take it seriously, but I do get frequent questions from them along the lines of “what does EA think about ___?” so that is a good sign, I think. Other things that are good to know about me are I love paisley ties, indie music, and I am a horrible cook.
Hello! My name is Garrett, and I am from Seattle, Washington. I have been involved in EA for about a year and was introduced to it by my closest friend while at school. He and I have both always been directly involved in humanitarian aid projects around the world for most of our lives (it’s how we met, actually), and after returning from a service trip in Lesbos where he had been shaken by the suicide of a small child there he began to wonder about the effectiveness of his efforts. This then put him on the road to finding EA. When he ran across it, he shared it with me, and I immediately fell in love with everything about EA. I was the director of the university’s service department at the time and was responsible for activities involving hundreds of students, and was frustrated with what I perceived to be inefficient and ineffective university policies governing funding and activity options. EA was simply too relatable to pass up. I’ve been heavily involved ever since, although my schooling has prevented me from attending many of the conferences that I wish to attend one day in order to make more of your acquintances. Until then, I am happily engaged in furthering the EA chapter here at my university in Idaho.
The causes I currently care about the most within EA are animal welfare and biosecurity (although I pretty much love every other cause area within EA as well).
I was raised hunting and was always taught that animals were for my use, and before knowing EA I consumed inordinate amounts of meat (I kickboxed and for several years was a competitive weight lifter). There was a period of 4 months where, in order to reach a certain physique within the required time frame, I consumed 220g of animal-based protein per day on a 1700 calorie diet (I developed some minor health issues, as could be expected). It wasn’t until I attended an EA online training seminar for group leaders that a compelling argument for a vegetarian lifestyle was made by a fellow EA member, Pete Rowlett (I hope he doesn’t mind me mentioning him here), that I decided to become vegan. His arguments, combined with the EA reading material I was familiarizing myself with, along with certain verses from my religious texts, all combined to convince me that I needed to change my eating lifestyle. I am currently trying to start our university’s first Animal Welfare movement in tandem with our EA chapter, and am also preparing presentations on animal welfare to give at our EA retreats that we are planning. It hasn’t been easy switching lifestyles cold-turkey like that, and I have slipped up on the rare occasion, but I have found it well worth the effort (weight loss has never been so easy) and don’t plan on going back. I will add, however, that my university has a culture of meat consumption, and my new lifestyle has turned away some interested romantic partners. That was an unforeseen and difficult hurdle to overcome. Anyways...
As for biosecurity, I am in my university’s premedical program and have always had a deep interest in international relations as well as biotechnology/biomedicine/etc. After reading “Biological Threats of the 21st Century”, I found myself drawn to this cause area that I hadn’t even known existed! I have studied Chinese since I was 10 years old and lived in Asia for a couple of years doing humanitarian aid, and the tense peace between the island of Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party, and the US always unnerved me. Biosecurity as a cause area was the perfect blend for me of IR and Biotech, and I found an amazing niche for “biosecurity in China” within EA. This combination of all my deepest intellectual interests was yet again too strong of a pull for me to ignore, and now I find myself attempting to organize our university’s Biosecurity in Asia society, contributing to online forums regarding Chinese biosecurity, and doing other various projects associated with biosecurity and our university, etc.
I plan on becoming a medical doctor so that I can “earn to give”, and I hope to eventually transition from medicine to working full-time on biosecurity policy in the United States (preferably related to China somehow, and hopefully done in direct association with EA). Fun facts about me are I like reading/writing, movies, debate, poetry, and art (and I am not too bad at playing Battlefront II online, either). I have four siblings, one of whom has been in Mexico doing humanitarian aid for 6 months now and I hope to persuade him to participate actively in EA. My family has not been very open to the ideas proposed by EA and I am having a difficult time convincing them to take it seriously, but I do get frequent questions from them along the lines of “what does EA think about ___?” so that is a good sign, I think. Other things that are good to know about me are I love paisley ties, indie music, and I am a horrible cook.