All of ashleylin's Comments + Replies

Thanks for sharing this, Chana! In the initial draft post, I had included some smaller changes to the Intro Fellowship, one of which was to host all sessions as dinner parties in an effort to draw out these late-night convos -- so I’m really excited this is something you’re thinking about. +1 on both of your interventions above. 

I’d also add that I think there are two types of 1-on-1s I do with fellows: the first is the classic career 1-on-1 where I try to connect people with useful resources / opportunities to speed them along in their EA journey. Th... (read more)

Thanks Anjay! I think this idea seems promising and definitely worth trying. Some potential pitfalls I’d probably want to design around:

• Students find it difficult to commit to a thing for three consecutive weekends. (not sure how to fix this)
• Students are super hyped during the 3-week period, and quickly lose interest after workshops end. Helping students set post-workshop goals / commitments, connecting them to peers and mentors for follow-up 1-on-1s, plugging them into projects, etc. could address this.
• Students forget what happens in between the weeks. I think your idea of mid-week discussions and socials could be helpful here, as was Chana's suggestion for a “crash course” review.

Thanks Joris! It sounds like your 4-week fellowship sprint went well. Would be excited to see a longer forum post on this and look at pre/post fellowship survey results (if they are available!)

I’d agree with this maybe extending to “a general call for group organizers to be more innovative in their approaches to group organizing.”  I think a lot of effort has been put into making plug-and-play resources to run uni groups (which can be useful in certain situations!), but generally think established groups / experienced organizers have on-the-ground kno... (read more)

Thanks Ben! Agreed that readings / connections are some of the most important things needed to capture the most talented and proactive people. That said, it seems like even the most “self-motivated” people get distracted in the college environment, where there are so many competing things to learn and student groups to be part of. As a result, I think slightly more structure is needed to get these people:

• For #2, instead of just getting folks subscribed to a newsletter, I like the idea of informal group chats and Discords that hold self-motivated people in

Thanks Mauricio! I agree that some of the pitfalls for the alternatives, specifically challenges with accountability (more things being self-directed) and content (shorter timescales affording less time to consume content), seem significant. That said, I’m optimistic that there are ways to mitigate those challenges through program design.

I think we agree that increasing accountability and quality content in Intro Fellowship-like things seems like a good idea. To me, the “current baselines of accountability and content” in the Intro Fellowship are not what ... (read more)

I’ve spent a couple hours reflecting on this and think the Penn residency was quite successful. As an organizer, I am incredibly grateful to have been able to shadow Sydney and Thomas for a couple weeks and help out / learn how to do things like 1-on-1s, run weekly dinners, set up club logistics, etc, (I was probably spending 20+ hours/week supporting the residency). 

That said, I’m wary of people updating too much in favor of residencies based on this post. 

Stanford EA ran a couple of residencies at other top universities on the East Coast during... (read more)

Why do you think Penn EA was sped up by ~4 months?

There are a bunch of caveats; see [3]. Sydney thinks it might be more than this, especially if we permanently added value to the club rather than just providing a speedup. Ashley should probably answer this more.

I’m also quite uncertain about the ~4 month speedup, but my instinct is that if Sydney and Thomas didn’t do the residency, Penn EA would look like what it does now a semester later. 

I think the primary value that the residencies provided are points 4 and 5, “being motivational/inspiring, ... (read more)