A small job became a big part of Khushi Chauhan’s life at McMaster and it’s what she’ll miss most when she graduates this spring. 

Heading into her second year, the Honours Life Sciences student was scrolling through Instagram when she saw a job posting for a public announcer to work McMaster Marauder home games. 

Chauhan was no stranger to the mic. She’d done morning announcements all throughout high school and pulled double duty during music shows where she played clarinet and volunteered as host. 

There was one problem with the Marauder job – while she definitely possessed the energy to hype up a crowd, she also needed to be knowledgeable about basketball and volleyball. “I knew absolutely nothing about either sport back then.” 

Yet she went ahead and applied on a whim. Chauhan was then asked to record herself reading from a script and introducing a starting line-up. She had no idea what that meant so she studied a YouTube video of Drake doing one at a Toronto Raptors game. 

To her surprise, she was hired. “As a young Indian woman, I’m not the voice you’d typically hear on the mic so I was proud to bring that to the job.” 

Chauhan showed up six hours early to prep for her first game. She rehearsed all her lines and memorized how to pronounce every Marauder’s name. But then she was given the starting line-up for the visiting team from Quebec. “I butchered every one of their names – you’d never know I’d studied French for eight years.” 

Despite the rocky start, Chauhan says she left that game with her biggest ever smile and couldn’t wait to get behind the mic again. She was asked to be the public announcer for volleyball, basketball and soccer games. It was a big commitment that came with some sacrifices – most games took place on weekends and there’d be fewer trips back home to Toronto. 

To this day, volleyball remains her favourite sport to announce and she now knows her beach dig from a bump. “The men’s and women’s teams were winning championships and the crowds were always really loud. Their energy made my job so much easier.” 

She’s never once thought of playing the sports she’s covered as an announcer. “Athletes throw themselves around like superheroes and I’m over here pulling a muscle just getting off the couch. I’m happy hyping up the crowd from a safe distance.” 

The best feedback came when Chauhan’s younger sister and mom attended the 2022 men’s volleyball playoff game at the end of her first year of announcing. “Neither of them is into sports but they were there to watch me in action. My sister said I sounded cool.” And as always, Chauhan’s mom was beyond proud. 

She’d always supported everything her eldest daughter did, including the decision to drop out after a single term at McMaster. It was Fall 2020, all of Chauhan courses were online – she was feeling isolated and alone. “I’m a very social person and going to class on Teams and Zoom wasn’t cutting it.” 

Chauhan wasn’t enjoying her introductory courses and she wasn’t aiming for medical school like many of her peers. She didn’t have a passion but looking back she says it’s ridiculous to expect every student to have everything figured out by the first term of their first year at university. “Not everyone knows the path to take right from the start.” Chauhan would eventually find her path. 

Khushi is Farsi for happiness and her mom wasn’t seeing much of it in her daughter. “She told me that she didn’t care if I went to university or worked at McDonald’s – she only wanted me to be happy with whatever I was doing.” 

And dropping out wasn’t the end of the world – especially compared to everything they’d already been through as a family. After moving from India to Qatar, Chauhan’s family eventually settled in Canada where she was born. Her family faced loss and uncertainty after her father unexpectedly passed away – they bounced between homes before finally finding their footing. It was her mom who held everything together, building a life for her daughters from the ground up. “Looking back, I have no idea how she managed to do all of that as a single parent yet still be there for us when we got home from school at the end of every day.” 

After sitting out the winter term, Chauhan decided to try again and went back to McMaster in September 2021. She still hadn’t found her passion or a path. All she knew is that she wanted to do something meaningful with her life. “I wanted to make my mom proud and be a good role model for my sister who was heading off to university.” 

Along with landing the P.A. job, Chauhan found her calling during her second year. Aging was a common theme in many of her science courses so she ran with it, taking more classes focused on older adults. In fourth year, she took a rehabilitation science course that showed how closely occupational therapy aligned with her beliefs and values. That’s now the path she plans to pursue after graduation. 

Announcing still remained a big part of her university life right up to the end – “it was something totally different, unexpected, and an experience I’m deeply grateful for.” 

Chauhan recently finished her third and final season as a public announcer but it’s a role she hopes to hang onto – even if it doesn’t exactly match her career path. “Maybe I can figure out how to be an O.T. by day and a P.A. by night.” 

And if the announcer’s a no-show at her Convocation ceremony, Chauhan says she’ll be ready to step in and promises she won’t need six hours of prep time.