Charlotte Darnell
https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/community-health/team
Charlotte Darnell
Karma: 1,067
Thank you for sharing your experience—I imagine it wasn’t easy to write. You clearly care deeply about this work.
I just want to acknowledge that being seriously ill is hard enough on its own. Doing it without financial security, while watching opportunities not come through, just sounds really difficult. I hope at least one of those things gets a bit easier soon.
Thank you for your reminder that the people we work alongside may be navigating complex challenges invisibly—it’s an important thing to keep in mind.
Hey Arthur, that sounds like a really cool project :))
Just a tip—the current title “I need help” is quite vague, and people browsing the forum might skip over it not knowing what kind of help you’re looking for. A more specific title would help people immediately understand what you’re asking for.
I’d recommend editing it to something vaguely along the lines of:
‘Looking for a US based AI safety mentor for international high school research project’.
Good luck!
Thanks for writing this up! I sometimes run the ‘first timers’ sessions at EAG, and have definitely both heard and given this advice before—you’re definitely not alone. Hopefully your writeup will help others :))
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!
Not sure on allergy rates, but skipping nuts seems like a good move to me if things aren’t individually packaged, or just potentially skipping nuts all together for simplicity. :))
“Real exploration means people might conclude common EA principles aren’t for them, or that different cause areas matter most—and that should be okay and encouraged.”—
I think this is important to say, thanks for saying it!
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 writing this @Patrick Gruban 🔸 , I enjoyed reading it!
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:“Musts” (things I actually committed to do—like following up on specific promises)
“Nice to haves” (everything else that would be good but isn’t urgent)
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:
Imposter syndrome
Uncertainty about priorities
Social anxiety about following up
Perfectionism
Maybe you’ve just been tired from a busy weekend and travelling to the conference. Seems ok to prioritise rest for a bit afterwards if you can.
Practical things that might help?
Focusmate or similar body-doubling tools
Setting a timer for 15 minutes to do just ONE follow-up email to get a bit of momentum
Messaging the easiest/friendliest person first to build momentum
Remember: people expect post-conference follow-ups to be delayed. You’re not too late!
Some followup is better than no follow up. It’s impossible to follow up on alllllll the potential EAG opportunities, just focus on making some steps.
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.
(I might add more object level thoughts later, but in the meantime -) thanks for writing this, I think it’s an important discussion to have, and for people to have shared understanding about.
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, likeConsider writing down all those better answers that came to you afterward. This certainly isn’t to torture yourself, but to capture those thoughts for next time. I’ve certainly learnt a lot from trying (and failing) work trials for EA Orgs that were then helpful the next time I did a trial task.
If interview anxiety was a factor, practice techniques like mock interviews with increasingly stressful scenarios, or try visualising yourself staying calm through unexpected questions.
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)
I really enjoyed EA North and was glad to see an event in the north of England. Thank you for organising Amanda!
Thank you for sharing Sarah! I’ve admired how thoughtful you’ve been about the strategy and getting feedback.
I’m glad EA has given you feelings of hope and purpose—I really resonate with that experience. I also resonate with sometimes feeling overwhelmed with all the things to read and do.
Some musings came to mind when I read your post. I don’t know if they’ll resonate with you, but sharing just in case it’s helpful.
1) When I’m feeling like that I sometimes think about the starfish parable mentioned here. There are an overwhelming number of starfish, but I’m doing my best to try and get some back into the sea, ideally as many as I can, knowing I’ll never save them all. That sometimes helps me get out of overwhelm/ paralysis.
2) Staying in metaphor land, I think it’s also worth saying that while I can’t save all the starfish, I can save more if I start sooner, rather than spending too long reading about how to throw. I think I used to feel like I didn’t know enough, that I could never catch up, but that I needed to catch up before I could do important work. It might be worth checking in with yourself about what you’re reading for pleasure / interest, and what you’re reading in your pursuit of impact. They certainly aren’t always mutually exclusive, and it is good to be well informed before you take certain actions, but try to figure out what what knowledge you need, to prioritise obtaining in order to take some next steps towards impact.
I really appreciated reading this, and resonated with many aspects. Thank you very much for writing it.
In case it’s helpful: given this is a fairly long post, I’d really appreciate if there were headers, so that I could skim what kind of things the post is covering, and help orient myself. I’d also have appreciated the conclusion being at the top as a clearer TLDR, to have a sense of where you were going with the piece.
Thank you for sharing! I liked this post :)) Recently I went to a social space I’d not been to before (which hasn’t happened for a while) and I was surprised how anxious I felt at first. I was also surprised how lovely people were very quickly, and I think it’s reminded me that new spaces full of strangers can actually be great places, albeit they don’t stay ‘strangers’ for very long.
So excited about this, thank you for all your hard work making it happen!!!
Fran, thank you for writing this. This is absolutely horrible to read about. I’m so sorry to hear what you went through. This shouldn’t have happened.
I think you’ve singlehandedly done a lot to improve the experience of women in a variety of EA spaces over the past few years, and you’ve supported so many people — I deeply hope the community can return that. 🩷
(Disclosure: I work on the Community Health team. This comment is personal, not on behalf of CEA.)