Learning the ropes and throwing lifelines
In March, as her friends and neighbors were scrambling to pack up and leave campus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Geeticka Chauhan found her world upended in yet another way. Just weeks earlier, she had been elected council president of MIT’s largest graduate residence, Sidney-Pacific. Suddenly the fourth-year PhD student was plunged into rounds of emergency meetings with MIT administrators.
From her apartment in Sidney-Pacific, where she has stayed put due to travel restrictions in her home country of India, Chauhan is still learning the ropes of her new position. With others, she has been busy preparing to meet the future challenge of safely redensifying the living space of more than 1,000 people: how to regulate high-density common areas, handle noise complaints as people spend more time in their rooms, and care for the mental and physical well-being of a community that can only congregate virtually. “It’s just such a crazy time,” she says.
She’s prepared for the challenge. During her time at MIT, while pursuing her research using artificial intelligence to understand human language, Chauhan has worked to strengthen the bonds of her community in numerous ways, often drawing on her experience as an international student to do so.
Adventures in brunching
When Chauhan first came to MIT in 2017, she quickly fell in love with Sidney-Pacific’s thriving and freewheeling “helper culture.” “These are all researchers, but they’re maybe making brownies, doing crazy experiments that they would do in lab, except in the kitchen,” she says. “That was my first introduction to the MIT spirit.”
Next thing she knew, she was teaching Budokon yoga, mashing chickpeas into guacamole, and immersing herself in the complex operations of a monthly brunch attended by hundreds of graduate students, many of whom came to MIT from outside the U.S. In addition to the genuine thrill of cracking 300 eggs in 30 minutes , working on the brunches kept her grounded in a place thousands of miles from her home in New Delhi. “It gave me a sense of community and made me feel like I have a family here,” she says.
Chauhan has found additional ways to address the particular difficulties that international students face. As a member of the Presidential Advisory Council this year, she gathered international student testimonies on visa difficulties and presented them to MIT’s president and the director of the International Students Office. And when a friend from mainland China had to self-quarantine on Valentine’s Day, Chauhan knew she had to act. As brunch chair, she organized food delivery, complete with chocolates and notes, for Sidney-Pacific residents who couldn’t make it to the monthly event. “Initially when you come back to the U.S. from your home country, you really miss your family,” she says. “I thought self-quarantining students should feel their MIT community cares for them.”
Culture shock...
