EA - My Personal Story of Rejection from EA Global by Constance Li

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: My Personal Story of Rejection from EA Global, published by Constance Li on September 23, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. I am the person rejected from EA Global who was anonymously featured in the Scott Alexander post about Opening EAG. I have decided to publicly identify myself and offer my story as an in-depth case study on the EAG admissions process. I’ve dedicated much of my life to EA principles since 2010 and yet I kept getting rejected from attending EAG. This experience brought up a lot of sadness and frustration as I felt like I was being pushed out of a community that I had always closely identified with. In the process of creating this post, I had a lot of time to reflect on EA as a personal identity vs a philosphy vs a community vs organizations. They are distinct from one another and yet are still tangled together. I will share many criticisms about the admissions process and will also be proposing some solutions to improving it. By posting my story, I hope to lower the barrier for an honest discussion about EAG Admissions, EA disillusionment, gatekeeping, community building, and solutions for improving EA communities and organizational processes. Goals: To allow reader to compare my application to the fact that I was rejected 3 times from EAG To offer more insight into the EAG admissions process by showing all my correspondences with CEA To critically discuss problems I see with the admissions process and propose some solutions To promote more easily accessible EA communities such as Gather Town To create a safer space for others to share their own stories so more experiences can be heard and accounted for Meet Up at Gather Town During EAG DC Since I had already blocked out my schedule in anticipation of EAG DC, I will be available most of this weekend (September 23 - 25) on EA Gather Town to video chat with anyone who wants to. Disclosures: This is my first forum post. Since I know this post could potentially come across as bitter, I want to say upfront that it’s always easy to criticize the actions of others and imagine that one could do things better. I make no claim about being able to do a better job at conference admissions. Through sharing my perspective, I hope to contribute to a discussion that helps everyone create a better event. Please feel free to skip to the “Criticisms and Proposed Solutions” section if you want to skip my lengthy personal story. To optimize for both transparency and brevity, I have also created an appendix which I will link to throughout this post. TLDR Timeline Summary: 2001 - 2010 - Hadn’t learned about Effective Altruism yet, but tried my best to do good for non-human animals 2010 - 2021- Discovered effective altruism and was engaged in EA work for 10+ years. Around 2012, I pivoted career paths because earning to give was the main EA recommendation at the time and went on to become a physician. I still pursued independent projects effectively and altruistically throughout medical school and residency, but was not directly involved in the EA community. Fall 2021- Decided to rejoin the EA community after EAGxVirtual Winter 2021 - Got rejection #1 for EAG London April 19, 2022 - Applied to EAG DC and heard no response (4 months) so assumed I was rejected July 2022- Made my original post as a reaction to a friend’s facebook post about EA Disillusionment August 15, 2022 - Had a long video chat with a sympathetic CEA staff member, “X,” who saw my post and received feedback, tips for re-integrating with the EA community, and encouragement for reapplying to EAG DC August 18, 2022 - Attended my first EA NYC event because of my talk with X August 22, 2022 - Got official rejection #2 for EAG DC (felt sad, but figured it was because my application from 4 months earlier was not that great) Aug - September, 2022 - Continued ...