Career Accelerator
A hackathon-style co-working group where we get the accountability, space, and support to take real action on our careers.
How it works
We host open co-working sessions on campus every Tuesday and Thursday evening, 4 hours each. Sessions are semi-structured: 1-hour deep work blocks with 20-minute social breaks. Think of it like office hours, come and leave as you please.
You work on whatever you want, though we'll pressure you to make real strides on career planning, internship applications, and skill-building before the quarter is out. We often grab dinner or hang out afterwards.
You'll have 1-on-1 support to build a personalized plan, and you'll share progress with the group so everyone learns from each other's findings.
What you get
What this looks like in practice
Activities will vary widely depending on your specific career focus and interests. As an example:
Avi came in unsure whether to pursue AI safety or space governance. Over fall quarter, he read deeply in both areas—50+ papers, 3 books, curated information feeds across X and Substack. To test fit in project management for AI safety, he mentored three student research projects on interpretability through SPAR.
Along the way, he came to feel that the intersection of space and AI was underappreciated. He wrote two briefs on this, which helped as he applied for and obtained a 6-month fellowship at Forethought. A side interest in AI consciousness led him and Stepan Los at EA NYU to co-curate a reading list that's now been published.
He applied to 2 positions and got 1 offer, attended 5 conferences, met 2 co-authors, 6 potential future collaborators, and found 17 researchers whose work he's now following. Throughout this time he chatted with the rest of our leadership and some of our members. We gave intros to a few relevant people in the areas he was exploring, gave early feedback on drafts, and helped to red-team some of his plans and ideas.