Though the election season in Delhi University just got over, more challenges await freshers in colleges. While tentative datesheets for DU exams slated for end of November are out for everybody, it’s the freshers enrolled into the newly introduced Four Year Undergraduate programme (FYUP) who seem to be caught in the frenzy, for these are the first set of exams under the new system. Metrolife speaks to students to understand their concerns ahead of the ever-dreaded exam season.
Vaishali Chowdhary is a first year BA in English (Hons) student in PGDAV College. When she saw her tentative datesheet marking her first exam for 20 November, she was baffled. “Everytime you prepare for an exam, you have an aim in mind. But when you don’t know the pattern, it certainly worries you way more.” Of the 11 Foundation Courses (FCs) offered under FYUP, Vaishali is studying four during this semester but she complains, “FCs and their projects take up half of our time. It is because we are made to do these projects with students who have pursued Sanskrit, Political Science etc as their background. So, there’s never a common free period to complete our projects.”
Students would be marked out 55 for their day-to-day projects, but there’s also a 20 marks written examination for the FCs. “We have no idea what sort of an exam would a FC be because we don’t even know its pattern. When we ask teachers about it, they tell us, we should wait for November. Perhaps the University would upload some sample papers online then,” says Vaishali. What is worse is that students have no reference papers.
The effervescent sounding Megha Yadav, a B.Com (Hons) student in Hindu College, seems ready to take up this uphill task, “I shifted from Kamla Nehru to Hindu College after the third list. By the time I shifted, I had already studied four FCs in KNC which were swapped with three others in Hindu. Quite often our Accounts professor makes us cancel a chapter from the new books and asks us to find some other books for the rest of the chapters. I just hope our seniors can help us out.” Megha adds that she is looking forward to her unofficial freshers party on 25 September to break the ice with seniors and take their help to crack the first FYUP semester exams.