Going to College

When we were studying in school, the educational qualification required before you could enroll for a professional degree or a degree in science and arts was 11+1 years of studies, instead of the 10+2 system high school students these days are familiar with.

The best point of this system was that we were only 16 years of age when we entered into 'college', free from our strict teachers, school uniforms, a long day consisting of 9-5 school hours and a compulsory attendance for all the classes. The worst point was that we had to cram what the +2 students study in two years in the available ten months of classes excluding the summer vacation. So we had very little time to enjoy our new-found freedom. But we made the most of our 'college girl' status and walked with our noses high up in the air whenever we passed our erstwhile juniors of the High School which was in the same campus as our college.

These educational institutions are located in a a sprawling multi-acre campus in a big town, a district capital (now a corporation) and the people were mostly middle class, not super rich as in the state's capital. Our college was one of the best known institutions in the state, exclusively devoted to women's education. It had Masters courses for Physics and Chemistry which even many men's colleges didn't possess. B.Com was introduced in our women's college, in the early seventies, our college being a pioneer in such things always. Till then we had only 'B.A'.s and 'B.Sc' s.

Our college was (and is) steeped in the traditions of our Tamil culture and arts and so had a degree course which conferred a 'B.A.' degree in Carnatic Music! A very strict dress code was enforced and students had to wear only sarees. The 'P.U.C' (Pre-University Course) class to which we belonged was the only exception as we had all completed only 16 years and not so adept in carrying off wearing a saree with aplomb! So we were allowed to wear 'Half-sarees'. We had so much grouse against the management as we all looked very 'country style' whereas the town's other women's college run by nuns allowed their students to wear such 'modern' dresses as salwar-kameez and chudidhars! They could even wear long skirts and blouses as their own High School in their campus had skirts and blouses as their uniforms. We used to envy them their smart uniform of blue skirt and white blouses, while we were in High School (clad in uniform green-coloured half-sarees) and now we were burning with envy at the 'cool' salwar kameez and other North Indian or western dresses their students sported!

Anyway wearing colours other than the green colour of our High School was a welcome change for us. We enjoyed wearing 'colour' dresses every day instead of the boring uniform. But it was no fun once we had shown off all the sets of half-sarees we possessed! We had to wait for the new dresses we usually received for our birthdays or some festivals like Pongal or Deepavali.

My classmates were mostly from my own 11th standard class of the high school and so we didn't feel as nervous as some of my new classmates who had come from other schools or other towns or even from other countries such as Malaysia, Srilanka and Singapore and were staying in the hostels. They had divided the 200 students belonging to the 'Maths Group' (Maths, Physics and Chemistry combo) into two batches, 'A' and 'B', each having 100 students. We were supposed to go for an engineering degree or for Physics or Chemistry degrees. I belonged to the 'B' batch. On the first day, I felt lost in the atmosphere of 100 students yelling 'Good Morning Miss' at the start of every class and held fast to the company of the girls from 'our school'. Some of my friends had been allotted to the 'A' batch and so I was forced to make new friends from the 'B' batch who were not so close to me in my high school days.

Initially, we were enjoying the freedom of not paying attention to the teacher as were not admonished for looking out of the window like we were in our high school and purposely gazed outside at the big trees in the campus (even though the limited scenery grew boring in minutes!) Some of the hostelers would gobble up the lunch boxes of the day scholars like me, sitting in the back benches. Then we came to know that the lecturers were just doing their duty (They could not be blamed if they could not manage to remember most of the 100 students' names in the ten months we had!)and not as interested in making us understand the lessons and get good marks as our devoted teachers of the high school! We had to look out for our own marks and we got scared of failing every course if we did not pay attention in the classes. Now we realized the value of our high school teachers who made us pay attention in the classes and who were till then 'dragons' giving out punishments like 'standing on the benches' or standing outside the classrooms', if we so much as glanced outside during classes!

For the first time we were responsible for the result of our own actions and attitudes. We felt grown-up within a few weeks of classes! But we sure enjoyed acting all 'grown up college girls' in front of our high school juniors who were lugging around huge school bags. So, even if the books needed for all the five hours of classes for our course could have filled a school bag easily, we insissted in carrying them stached in our hands, resting against our bodies-often dropping them in a very 'uncool' manner!