A student from a convent school is subjected to a routine that is similar to a military school.
Not a single strand of her hair should pop out from the braid, the uniform should be well-ironed, nails properly cut, shoes polished till they scream white and to top it all, a tattoo on any part of the body is a complete ‘No’. After enduring this regime for 14 long years when the girls enter a coed institution, the shock value is immense. There exists a section which actually experiences cultural shock. Being displaced from a sudden standard routine to a guilt free milieu can be unnerving.
It took St Anthony’s Jisha James, now a III year student in DU, “One year to properly start talking to boys. I was shy and introvert. I was shivering when we were ragged on a college trip. Besides, there were so many extra-curricular choices unlike school that I did not know how to respond to which one.” In a convent school, girls move about uninhibitedly. They can gossip for hours without worrying about the reactions of the opposite sex. But college is a whole new ball game.
Harshita Mittal realised this with a pinch of salt; “College students think mostly about their own needs. It is difficult to adjust with them. When a girl speaks to two or more guys she is deemed characterless while nobody questions boys.”
Jyoti Nair, on the contrary, dedicates her rise in confidence level to the group of boys she hung out with; “From fests, canteens, classes and bus stop talks; there were no restrictions. I am more of an extrovert now than I was back in school.”
A girl’s identity in school is often typecast as shy or very outgoing. Her interaction sphere is limited to counted people. In a seminary, every day is a day of building an image. A room of discipline, set rules and regulations is replaced with liberating and guilt free air.
She is no longer haunted by a teacher’s nagging words of bringing an application for being absent on a particular day, nor is she prohibited from eating junk food.
Clothes become the new language of expression. Being over-weight makes one conscious. Proper dressing sense is expected out of college fucchas or they are made fun of. Says Heena Singh, a Std XII student of Mater Dei School, “Girls put in a lot of effort into how they dress and behave. In university you will seldom be labelled a behenji for wearing a chic salwar suit. It is considered as ethnic Indian wear.”
College teachers feel that it is a lacking in the education system that delays a student’s ability to gel with others. RK Verma, an associate professor at Sri Aurobindo College says, “Our system is competition driven. It doesn’t provide a platform where students and teachers can interact. We see each other as rivals. By late teens the student becomes an adversary of the other. It depends upon a teacher personal initiative to help them open up.”