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Rujul Gandhi’s love of studying blossomed right into a love of language at age 6, when she found a e book at a storage sale referred to as “What’s Behind the Phrase?” With forays into historical past, etymology, and language genealogies, the e book captivated Gandhi, who as an MIT senior stays fascinated with phrases and the way we use them.
Rising up partially within the U.S. and principally in India, Gandhi was surrounded by a wide range of languages and dialects. When she moved to India at age 8, she may already see how understanding the Marathi language allowed her to attach extra simply to her classmates — an early lesson in how language shapes our human experiences.
Initially considering she may need to research artistic writing or theater, Gandhi first discovered about linguistics as its personal area of research by a web-based course in ninth grade. Now a linguistics main at MIT, she is learning the construction of language from the syllable to condemn degree, and in addition studying about how we understand language. She finds the human features of how we use language, and the truth that languages are continuously altering, notably compelling.
“Once you study to understand language, you may then admire tradition,” she says.
Speaking and connecting, with a technological help
Profiting from MIT’s International Instructing Labs program, Gandhi traveled to Kazakhstan in January 2020 to show linguistics and biology to highschool college students. Missing a stable grasp of the language, she cautiously navigated conversations together with her college students and hosts. Nevertheless, she quickly discovered that working to grasp the language, giving culturally related examples, and writing her assignments in Russian and Kazakh allowed her to have interaction extra meaningfully together with her college students.
Expertise additionally helped bridge the communication barrier between Gandhi and her Russian-speaking host father, who spoke no English. With assist from Google Translate, they bonded over shared pursuits, together with Nineteen Fifties and ’60s Bollywood music.
As she started to review pc science at MIT, Gandhi noticed extra alternatives to attach folks by each language and expertise, thus main her to pursue a double main in linguistics and in pc science and electrical engineering.
“The issues I perceive by linguistics, I can attempt to discover options to by pc science,” she explains.
Energized by bold tasks
Gandhi is set to prioritize social affect whereas searching for these options. By way of varied management roles in on-campus organizations throughout her time at MIT, particularly within the student-run Academic Research Program (ESP), she realized how a lot working immediately with folks and being on the logistical facet of huge tasks energizes her. With ESP, she helps set up occasions that convey hundreds of highschool and center faculty college students to campus annually for lessons and different actions led by MIT college students.
After her second directing program, Spark 2020, was cancelled final March due to the pandemic, Gandhi ultimately embraced the digital expertise. She deliberate and co-directed a digital program, Splash: 2020, internet hosting about 1,100 college students. “Interacting with the ESP neighborhood satisfied me that a corporation can operate effectively with a robust dedication to its values,” she says.
The pandemic additionally heightened Gandhi’s appreciation for the MIT neighborhood, as many individuals reached out to her providing a spot to remain when campus shut down. She says she sees MIT as residence — a spot the place she not solely feels cared for, but additionally relishes the chance to look after others.
Now, she is bridging cultural obstacles on campus by performing artwork. Dance is one other considered one of Gandhi’s loves. When she couldn’t discover a group to follow Indian classical dance with, Gandhi took issues into her personal palms. In 2019, she and a few buddies based Nritya, a scholar group at MIT. The group hopes to have its first in-person efficiency this fall. “Dance is like its personal language,” she observes.
Expertise born out of empathy
In her tutorial work, Gandhi relishes researching linguistics issues from a theoretical perspective, after which making use of that information by hands-on experiences. “The benefit of MIT is it enables you to exit of your consolation zone,” she says.
For instance, in IAP 2019 she labored on a geographical dialect survey of her native Marathi language with Deccan School, a middle of linguistics in her hometown. And, by the Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program (UROP), she is at the moment engaged on a analysis mission centered on phonetics and phonology, focusing her consideration on how language “contact,” or interactions, influences the sounds that audio system use.
The next winter, she additionally labored with Tarjimly, a nonprofit connecting refugees with interpreters by a smartphone app. She notes that translating programs have superior shortly by way of permitting folks to speak extra successfully, however she additionally acknowledges that there’s nice potential to enhance them to profit and attain much more folks.
“How are folks going to advocate for themselves and make use of public infrastructure if they’ll’t interface with it?” she asks.
Mulling over different concepts, Gandhi says it could be fascinating to discover how signal language is likely to be extra successfully be interpreted by a smartphone translating app. And, she sees a necessity for additional bettering regional translations to higher join with the tradition and context of the areas the language is spoken in, accounting for dialectal variations and new developments.
Trying forward, Gandhi needs to concentrate on designing programs that higher combine theoretical developments in linguistics and on making language expertise extensively accessible. She says she finds the work of bringing collectively expertise and linguistics to be most rewarding when it includes folks, and that she finds essentially the most which means in her tasks when they’re centered round empathy for others’ experiences.
“The expertise born out of empathy is the expertise that I need to be engaged on,” she explains. “Language is basically a folks factor; you may’t ignore the folks while you’re designing expertise that pertains to language.”
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