rcthrowaway

I am sorry my tone came off as tone-deaf. I'm neither a secret RC plant or a false-flag on them...I'm somebody who uprooted their life for 3 months and traveled thousands of miles and left behind all of my friends to attend an amazing program.

Please understand my perspective then that I might be less than kind in my opinions on somebody who missed an online meeting (basically the only one actually asked for by RC!) from the comfort of their home and then saw fit to complain about it in a blog post.

The entitlement is what set me off.

Poor wording on my part. NYC is full of different scenes/social circles, clubs, programs, so on and so forth. There is a flakiness (in my opinion) that often accompanies people that try out lots of different things.

For a program like RC, having people join and drop out or decide to only show up for a few days a week or whatever directly cheapens the experience for others and damages the community and serendipity and mood that arises when you have a bunch of smart, dedicated, and focused people there.

My belief (and I emphatically am not staff, just an alum with opinions) is that they want to make absolutely sure people are committed. They also want to make absolutely sure everybody is getting the same start.

RC has grants for everybody that comes from a historically underrepresented background.

If it's that big a deal maybe more work should've been done to make sure they knew what they had to do.

They don't force you to quit your job, and offer 1 week mini-batches for people that can't do larger time committment. They also don't take a cut from your salary for hiring work; that is handled between them and the companies looking for hires.

There is a lot more that goes on during orientation, and treating it as another optional video to sit through harms the sort of community that are trying to form.

Throwaway account because reasons.

Having attended RC, this actually makes sense if you understand the scene. First, RC intro is key to getting everybody on the same page, and has been done in-person until recently. If an early-morning meeting seems weird, chalk it up to timezones...the in-person intro is at a much more humane hour for the East Coast and has catered breakfast and everything.

Also, as part of the whole hard-line thing...RC is in NYC and is in large parts reflective of that. They need to filter out the large quantity of dabbles and dilettantes and people who would attend just as another social status thing or adventure in finding themselves. They want people who are committed to their craft, and if you've set aside six weeks or twelve weeks of your life but can't stay on top of reading emails and double-checking that you've done everything right, maybe you shouldn't be complaining.