Driven by a passion to make helping others a part of my profession and doing something impactful, I chose to pursue my post-graduation in social work long ago. Before going on a long break in my career, I gained varied experience in research, training, and teaching. Trying to find my way back, currently, I am learning new skills every day in the field of research, development economics, and computational social science. I love coffee, painting, writing, and having sudden laughter moments with my kids any time of the day.
QNaghma
Karma: 7
Hi,
I am about 2-3 months old into knowing EA. I was going through the bio of a professor who impressed me in a virtual lecture and her bio stated that she had pledged a part of her income to EA. That’s where I first stumbled upon the name ‘Effective Altruism’ and it caught my attention immediately. The name says a lot. Thus, one thing led to the other as I continued browsing and reading about it, and here I am today.
Not knowing what I would do after my undergraduate studies, I knew one thing, I wanted to be able to help others as part of my profession. This led me to get my post-graduation degree in social work. I continued working in a variety of areas from human trafficking, children with intellectual disability, community development, counseling, capacity building of counselors, school social work, designing and carrying out researches in different areas, and teaching research methodology to post-grad students.
Thereafter I took a long break in my career and long story short, here I am trying to find my way back. For the past year, I have been educating myself through various online courses in computational social science, research methods, data, and development policy. Childhood poverty is one of the areas where I am keenly interested in working. Reading about EA brought my focus to concerns of farmed animal welfare part of which were there at the back of my mind but, thanks to EA work, got to the fore now. I also got to know a lot about longtermism issues that I didn’t know much about earlier.
I am looking forward to interacting with members here and learn a lot. I am open to discussions, volunteering or assisting/liaison with anyone on interesting EA-related projects.
Thanks,
Naghma
Thank you for this great post!
The first piece of advice about looking at resources for hiring managers is quite insightful! I will try to incorporate it in my job search.
I can totally relate to the remaining points. Entering the job market after a really long break has made me even less likely to apply than others. I find pushing myself to apply to a job as rather a learning as well as confidence-building experience of its own. Each application episode helps me overcome my fears. Rejection comes as not a rejection but another feedback that I can use to improve.
Keeping an eye on an application that I would love to submit in the future definitely helps in having a to-do checklist to prepare myself for that desired job.
You have very well pointed out the fact about ‘failure to demonstrate’. Demonstrating one’s abilities is another skill needed. I am back in the job market after a really long break and thus all of the above points have made me boost my confidence that took a hit because of the break.