Kudos to you for having the courage to write this post. One of the things I like most about it is the uncanny understanding and acknowledgement of how people feel when they are trying to enter a new social group. EAs tend to focus on logic and rationality but humans are still emotional beings. I think perhaps we may underrate how these feelings drive our behavior. I didn’t know that university organizers were paid—that, to me, seems kind of insane and counter to the spirit of altruism. I really like the idea of making it need based. One other thing your post made me reflect on is how community-building strategies and epistemics may differ at less-selective versus highly-selective universities. Your experience is at highly-selective schools but I’m curious how many EA groups there are at regional comprehensive universities and open access schools, or HBCUs, community colleges, tribal colleges, etc. Those student populations are very different but may bring valuable perspectives to EA if effort is made to engage them.
Kudos to you for having the courage to write this post. One of the things I like most about it is the uncanny understanding and acknowledgement of how people feel when they are trying to enter a new social group. EAs tend to focus on logic and rationality but humans are still emotional beings. I think perhaps we may underrate how these feelings drive our behavior. I didn’t know that university organizers were paid—that, to me, seems kind of insane and counter to the spirit of altruism. I really like the idea of making it need based. One other thing your post made me reflect on is how community-building strategies and epistemics may differ at less-selective versus highly-selective universities. Your experience is at highly-selective schools but I’m curious how many EA groups there are at regional comprehensive universities and open access schools, or HBCUs, community colleges, tribal colleges, etc. Those student populations are very different but may bring valuable perspectives to EA if effort is made to engage them.