“Why are you here?”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I smiled, and offered him a plate.  He didn’t take it; he pressed again.

“Why are you here? Are you having fun?”

“Um,” I replied, intelligently.  After an eternity, he accepted his plate and moved away.  He tossed his final thoughts over a withered shoulder.   “This is not a fun place.  Don’t have fun.  I don’t know why you’re here.”

No one else at the shelter asked me any questions that night.  Nothing more than the usual what’s your name, where are you from, can I have mine with no sauce, please.  But his question would not quit.  Would not SIT DOWN.  Kept spinning and reeling and dancing in my head.

To be honest, it scared me.  By the end of the night, I scared me.  Mind you, I was no stranger to soup kitchens; a large portion of my adolescence was spent cheerfully racking up community service points by playing “Restaurant” at my church’s monthly feed.  I donned my favorite apron and circulated the seminary room, doling out hot bowls of chili, refilling glasses of punch, and serving up seconds on cornbread and thirds on smiles.  I smiled because this work made me happy – I was near food, I was feeding people, I was having fun.  And THAT – that last bit – that was his question, and my fear.  The fun-ness of all this.  And whether I should be having fun.

It took a week of brain-racking and soul-searching, but I think I made peace with my friend’s question.  He just wanted me to remember that those community service hours were serious, too.  Those extra points on my pretty pink card may have been someone’s only meal that day, and after they turned in their plate, and I turned in my card, they went on to deal with problems bigger than I could ever hope to understand, and I just went to go home and wash my apron.

And now, even though I am long out of high school, and I return to shelters because I still like being near food and feeding people and doling out cornbread and smiles – despite all of these reasons for being here, I have to remember that what I am actually doing is something real and important.  At its core, service is not something fun; it is something necessary.

Last night at the shelter, I smiled a little less, but stood a little taller and moved a little faster.  My friend returned.  “Back again, Crazy?”  His eyes were unblinking, but this time I think I detected a smile.  “Why are you here?”

In G-Lab, students are paired with host companies to help solve real challenges. Our section of the course focuses specifically on healthcare delivery in Africa. The organization we are working with is Warmbaths Hospital in Bela Bela, South Africa – a 133-bed hospital located about one hour outside of Johannesburg. Over the fall semester we will conduct research and try to complete as much data gathering and analysis on Warmbaths as possible. Then, for three weeks in January, we will travel to South Africa to work onsite at the hospital, helping hospital leaders implement potential solutions to address one of their main challenges.

So what is their challenge? Well . . . frustration #1 of working with a very busy and remote hospital on the other side of the world is that it’s really hard to schedule conference calls. We have had one call so far where we learned that they want us to look at their staffing model and make evidenced-based recommendations that can be scaled throughout the entire hospital. That’s about all we know so far, but we should have another call in the next week where we can hopefully begin to understand in more detail why they want us to look at the staffing model and what the hospital’s ultimate objectives are.

In addition, we want to understand more about how the hospital is run. Is it like a traditional U.S. hospital with segmented departments and physician specialists? Or like the more rural clinics in parts of Africa where there is only one type of physician that sees patients with any and all needs? Our guess is that Warmbaths falls somewhere in between. What we have learned is that Africa, in general, addresses very different patient needs than we find in the U.S. The primary services rendered by clinics are for infectious disease testing and treatment (mostly HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Typhoid), and women’s and children’s needs (mostly pre- and postnatal care).

We will be blogging every week between now and December 18^th to update you on the progress with our project. We hope to have more frequent updates when we’re actually at the hospital from January 11^th – 29^th, but that will depend on Internet access. Check back regularly for updates on what we’re learning about Warmbaths Hospital and how we hope to do our small piece of improving healthcare delivery in Bela Bela, South Africa.

The Team: Tim, Kelsey, Rimi, and Nick (from left to right)

Where we're headed in January: Bela Bela, South Africa

]]> http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1233 0 http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1227 http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1227#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:37:28 +0000 Alex Hamilton Chan http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1227 We must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity of thought, diversity of culture and diversity of belief. In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family
– Barack Obama

My intention is not to talk about Dr. Seuss in this entry but on genetically modified food. I read an interesting article the other day on New York Times about genetically modified food and its influence on the developing countries.

The article included several perspectives from well-known scholars of various fields. As young professionals with extensive and rigorous scientific training, we should be able to chime into the discussion as well.

The statistics on world hunger is quite grim (yet not hopeless!) According to UN estimate, the number of hungry people in the world will rise to over 1 billion this year. That is 1 in 6 people. Think about it. (If the lab in which I work is the world, that will mean about 3.5 people in my lab will go to bed hungry this year. I’m imagining how the conversation will go down. “Hi, Nate. you are not going to get enough to eat for the next six months. Deal with it;” or “Hi, Anusuya, your stomach is growling again.” Okay, my point is not to starve Nate or Anusuya but to stress the point that when we talk about the number of hungry people, we are talking about real people – as real as you and me and Nate and Anusuya.)

So back to my point, as rational thinkers, we need to confront the challenge to drastically increase food production in the next decade to feed the world whose population is still increasing. How do we do it?

Ms. Shiva, the founder of Navdanya, is an opponent of genetically modified foods. According to her, “The claim by the genetic engineering industry that without genetically modified food we cannot respond to climate change is simply false….The green revolution that we are building through Navdanya is based on conserving biodiversity and conserving water while increasing food production per acre. What we need is biodiversity intensification, not chemical intensification. What we need is to work with nature’s nutrient cycles and hydrological cycle, not against them. It is time to put small farmers, especially women, at the heart of this process.” Many argue against big industrious farming practices.

While shopping at farmer’s markets is indeed a pleasant experience, I personally believe that’s a rich world luxury. I don’t believe there is any chance to feed the entire world in such fashion. Besides, if we only rely on local/regional produce, instead of enjoying biodiversity, we actually will be very limited in our food choices. However, I’m again digressing. I’m not attempting to discuss operations and transportation of food. I’m talking about the need for science and technology to create high-yield food and climate-change adaptive crops. I don’t claim to be an expert in this field at all, but I’m actually really puzzled by why people are so terrified of genetically-modified foods. We have been eating fortified cereals without any problems and taking synthesized small molecules medications with an ease of mind. So why all the fuss about genetically modified foods?

Is genetically-modified food ideal? No. Just like taking supplemental vitamins in pill forms isn’t perfect either. Perhaps food scientists need to de-mystify genetically-modified food and tell people what it actually is. Secondly, I believe we have the responsibility to think pragmatically. The rate required to increase food production is way higher than natural evolution. When millions and millions of children go blind from vitamin A deficiency, is it not a good idea to enhance the natural production of vitamin A in common foods that people eat in developing countries?

I can’t help but wonder if the resistance comes from ignorance or naivety. The huge increase in hunger is real. Incremental changes in farming habits are not enough to combat the rapid increase of child malnutrition. Instead of an irrational debate based on fictitious claims, science, technology, facts and, above all, open and logical minds should enable us to truly solve the problem with world hunger. Science alone will not solve the problem, but without it we will  only be paralyzed in a world of meaningless arguments. And 1 in 6 people will go to bed hungry tonight.

On October 1^st and 2^nd, 2009, three members of the MIT Graduate Student Council (GSC) traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with U.S. senators’ and representatives’ offices about specific graduate student issues.  Before their visit, Alex Hamilton Chan, Alex Evans, and Kevin McComber prepared extensively on the topics of open access to federally-funded published research, raising the cap on H1-B visas for advanced-degree holders, and tax exemption of graduate student stipends.  The trip was part of the Legislative Action Days of the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS), of which the MIT GSC is a member.  NAGPS is a nationwide organization of graduate and professional student governments that aims to connect the governments and lobby for their concerns.

The three students met with the offices of eleven senators and congressmen who hold spots on committees relevant to the issues of interest.  With their data-backed knowledge of the issues and the support of both the MIT GSC and NAGPS, the three students found their arguments to be well-received.  To their pleasant surprise, a few offices expressed interest in pursuing possible legislation on the issue of graduate student stipend tax exemption.

Chan, Evans, and McComber are now working with MIT’s Washington, D.C. office to draft wording for a possible bill on graduate student stipend tax exemption, and they are continuing to spread awareness of the issues at MIT and to other schools in the Boston area.

]]> http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1194 0 http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1184 http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1184#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:09:31 +0000 Alex Hamilton Chan http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1184 The President’s visit to MIT on Friday is one of the most exciting events to have happened to MIT in years. As everybody celebrated and shared their story about how they caught a glimpse of the president (or in my […]

The President’s visit to MIT on Friday is one of the most exciting events to have happened to MIT in years. As everybody celebrated and shared their story about how they caught a glimpse of the president (or in my friend Zenzile’s case, jumped over dozens of people to shake his hand ), I couldn’t help but wonder what this visit by the President of the United States meant.

On the surface, Obama came to talk about energy innovation and policy. So, one way to look at it is exactly as how I was quoted in the Daily Free Press, “the President’s visit was an exciting acknowledgement of MIT’s role in energy innovation.” (http://www.dailyfreepress.com/obama-calls-for-u-s-to-become-the-world-s-energy-leader-1.2035198) But I think it is more than that. Obama did not choose any school, not even his Alma Mater, that second most prestigious school in Cambridge – he picked MIT, the iconic institute of science, technology and innovation.

This message is consistent with Michelle Obama’s speech in the UK. She said how making good grades is cool. This country and this world had adopted a definition of “cool” that treats nerds or smart as weird. The “cool” is some sort of combination of a lack or despise of self-discipline and hard-work, the cool kids demonstrate a general indifference about the world and knowledge. What the Obamas are saying is that being smart, getting good grades, doing great in school is the new “cool” – reminding us that the world is improving because we have moved beyond a group of jock-ish cavemen into a species that respect and accumulate knowledge relentlessly, that we have evolved into a group of humans who cares and works for the ideals of the betterment of humanity. 

So, the President’s message is clear, smart is the new cool, and nerdy is the new sexy.  And a president who chooses to be at MIT rather than a president who talks about how you can be a head of state while getting all C’s in college symbolizes the re-activation of the collective brain of humanity and the path to a better earth.

]]>

I’m sure Timmy (names have been changed to protect the identity of the offender) did not mean to ruin my morning.  But the fact is, when I hopped on the Northwest Shuttle and ran into Timmy, Timmy had greeted me not with “Hello”, not with “What’s crackin’?”, not with, “Catch that episode of Hell’s Kitchen last night?”, but instead with “You. Look. Tired.”

And as I stepped off the shuttle, and every time I stepped out my office to grab a drink of water, or ran down the hall to grab some notes from the printer, indeed all morning long – I just kept mouthing the words to myself in different ways, trying to impart some positive meaning to them.

“YOU look tired.”

“You LOOK tired.”

“You look TIRED.”

Nope, no two ways about, this is the grad school equivalent of the day someone calls you “Ma’am”.

On one trip to the printer, I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass of the Triaxial Consolidation Test for Cohesiveness of Soil poster hanging in the hallway.  I studied my reflection over the faded diagram of a triaxial cell.  What had Timmy seen?  What had provoked this particular greeting?  Bags under my eyes?  Brows in need of plucking?  Had I gone not far enough, or too far with the cosmetics?  Should I have held back on the foundation and mascara?  Or added more blush?  Was it something bigger?  Poor posture?  Walking too slow?  What, Timmy?  What? WHAT?!

I slapped myself and continued towards the printer.  Maybe Timmy had meant it as a compliment.  MIT is a really special place.  Work is kind of social currency around here.  If I looked tired – it means I am tired – which means I’ve been doing things at night time – which at MIT means I’ve been working at night time – which means I’ve been working hard – which means Timmy actually respects me – which might mean Timmy even admires my work ethic.  Maybe Timmy was simply greeting me with an acknowledgement of my high MIT social status owing to my hours and hours of hard work.  Timmy didn’t mean, “You look tired,” he meant, “You look like a hard-working MIT student, the cream of the crop!”

Judging by the looks of the people in the computer lab, I think I actually said, “WELL WHO WANTS TO LOOK LIKE THAT?!” out loud as I snatched my printout from the HP Laserjet.  I stormed back to my office with the intent of reading about the Conditional Expectation of Random Variables, but instead I just sat there and thought about Timmy.  Timmy hadn’t looked all that hot himself.  Timmy had a few bags under his eyes.  Timmy could have sat up straighter, could have ironed his shirt that morning. ‘You know what, Timmy?’ I thought. ‘YOU look tired.’

I wanted to run back to Timmy and tell him that.  But that would be mean.  Instead I opted to turn my anger into good and let all you Timmy’s out there know that “You look tired” is no way to start a conversation.  I don’t care if it’s midterm season, I don’t care if quals are coming up, I don’t care if your friend has bags the size of suitcases under her eyes, do not tell her this.  Grab her arm and ask her “How’s it goin’?” instead.  Take her for a coffee.  Tell her a joke.  Inquire about the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen.  Just – don’t go there, or you might actually give her a reason to look tired.  And for both of y’all’s sake – you don’t want that.

]]> http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1143 6 http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1110 http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1110#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:29:29 +0000 shayna.harris http://gsc.mit.edu/blog/?p=1110 It’s been hard to ignore the bout of coughing, sneezing, and sniffling that’s been going on pretty consistently in class over the past month. It was also inevitable that I would pick something up – we share classes with the […]