Urvi Khaitan | Everyday People 111

Urvi Khaitan is a PhD student at Oxford. We spoke about a ton of things, including academia, privilege, and stepping outside of yourself.

Quotes from the conversation:

On volunteering outside of her PhD studies:

Any kind of educational pursuit… is such a personal and individualized journey, that then there is really no space to interact with the wider world and think about problems that aren’t your own. It’s easy to get self-absorbed.

On Rural India School Enterprise (RISE), the NGO she works with:

[It’s] based in a remote part of West Bengal… it’s an institution that provides supplementary education to [students in government schools], as well as pastoral support.

About brain drain and privilege in academia:

We’ve seen an increased flight of really bright brilliant promising students moving away from the subcontinent towards funded PhDs in Europe and the US… it’s then become a natural progression to stay there and never come back, and then work on pressing issues to India and South Asia, but in these ivory towers. I myself have been doing that for 5 years at Oxford.

South Asia and South Asian problems become the source of one’s bread and butter in these privileged contexts. The profound lack of self awareness is deeply disturbing to me.

On coming back to India:

I plan on coming back to India when I’m done with my PhD next year. I can’t imagine living anywhere else in the world because I cannot imagine caring about any other part of the world as much as I do about this place.

On studying at any age:

There’s this tower in Oxford which is associated with a college called Harris Manchester, and one side of the tower it says, “It’s later than you think” and you walk further and look back up and on the other side of the tower, it says “It’s never too late.” …you can always return to the pursuit of intellectual inquiry and it’s never too late.

On pursuing a PhD as a career:

I think it’s important we conceptualize it as a professional thing and not just purely a degree that you do. It is your livelihood; it is what is supporting you. And you can do it at any stage in your life and sometimes you just want to do it for the pure joy of sitting with something for a long time. I was not quite prepared for how life-changing it has been.

On a relationship with yourself:

I think we should stop being afraid of embarrassing ourselves, and stop limiting ourselves because we’re afraid that people will say what we’re doing is cringe-worthy.

Urvi’s recommendations:

Urvi’s recommendations:

1. Please check out @RISEprojects on Twitter and @risecharity on Instagram.

2. This video: