Holly Morgan – Rodney House 2003 – 2007

The Three R's: Reason, Respect and self-Respect

“So when did you start to get some self-esteem?” I’m sitting in Green Park, London on a warm evening. Across from me, sits my friend Sam from the Global Poverty Project. We’re talking about my new role as Executive Director of The Life You Can Save, an organisation run by the world’s most famous living philosopher and my ultimate hero, Peter Singer. “Well,” I say, “I guess it’s when I started high school.”

Every school has its ‘cool’ crowd, but at Shoreham College, I realised for the first time that it could be pretty cool to, well, not be cool. The gems of the school – students and teachers alike – stood out from the crowd, almost by definition. Take Mrs Rawlings, for example. I could hardly see her belonging to the ‘popular’ crowd at school; she’s as unashamedly unconventional as they come…and a total legend. She also watered my animal rights roots; I’ll never forget that assembly when she brought in a couple of live lobsters that she’d rescued from the cooking pot! Shoreham College encouraged me to care deeply about people too, from other assemblies on global poverty or blood donation, to Religious Studies lessons that emphasised the importance of sensitivity to other people’s beliefs and cultural traditions, to the general atmosphere of respect for each other among students. Finally, this school enabled me to flourish academically – no longer afraid of being branded a “boffin” and now trusted by teachers to work more independently when I wanted to stretch myself, I left school with a far more analytical and active mind than I expect I would have developed at most other schools. So Shoreham College instilled in me three extremely valuable things: self-confidence, respect for others and a solid education. I believe that these three things have set me up for a very successful and happy life.

I left Shoreham College just five years ago and, thanks to these three traits, I’ve already worked with some truly exceptional organisations, people and ideas. I’ve found organisations that have been independently estimated to create a year of healthy human life for £15 (Against Malaria Foundation) or prevent 100 days of suffering on a factory farm with every dollar (The Humane League). I’ve worked with people who are pioneering anti-ageing research (Aubrey de Grey) or spearheading the biotechnological abolition of suffering (David Pearce). And I’ve come across ideas that enable you to increase your positive impact on the world by many orders of magnitude (GiveWell’s charity cost-effectiveness, 80,000 Hours’ professional philanthropy, LessWrong’s existential risk reduction…Google them!). This is all because I (i) cared massively about helping others, (ii) had the kind of strategic and rational mind-set that worked hard to figure out the best ways to help others and (iii) had the self-belief to put this all into practice and chase my vision of a happier world…thank you, Shoreham College!!!

Keep on nurturing that simple but immensely powerful message: Love. Think. Do.