Ramblings of a Delhi University Student
Delhi University has been in the news for nearly two months as I type this. From discourse to diatribes, the students have seen it all, and eventually, have had to bear the brunt of the administration's failure(s). But there’s a common denominator that runs deeper into the workings of the system, a denominator that has solidified its position at the helm of the fabled Delhi University Experience™ - mediocrity.
It’d be downright outrageous to expect a purely utopian education system to apparate out of thin air and right all wrongs in an instant. To be fair, no DU student would expect that once they’ve spent a semester on campus. It’s usually the starry-eyed stakeholders- school students- that develop otherworldly notions of the DU life while they’re still in school, fuelled only by board results that are more or less adjusted for inflation.
A student’s first introduction to Delhi University is perhaps the cut-off list notification. Every year, around the same time, the hopes of many aspirants are crushed, while that of a select few are banished to the netherworld. The ‘cream’ that somehow gets in is faced by an unnerving experience at the hands of a lax, babu-fied administration- a regular feature for the greater chunk of college life. At first, one can’t help being angry and agitated. But after a while one is angry, agitated and hopeless, the latter occupying a more prominent position as status quo. But the school kids dream on, divided by streams, united by the goal to get into an Institute of ‘Eminence’.
There are two kinds of students you’ll find at DU, and only the first kind had planned it. The second comprises mostly of entrance ‘rejects’ and students that have discovered their long lost love- their greatest passion for a subject at the very last minute- a divine revelation that prompts them to defy traditionally imposed norms to pursue a three-year degree over a much-hyped ‘professional’ course. The Venn diagram of entrance ‘rejects’ and passion merchants is usually a perfect circle. But the passion wanes away with time, like a candle out of wax, except here the candle is placed inside a furnace.
What do you get when you place forty smart kids in the same class, the majority of whom had occupied the upper academic echelons in their school at some point? Competition. But as counter-intuitive as it may seem, the competition here often leads to a burn-out, since it is not suitably supplemented. We have decent libraries, but little to no curation in terms of relevance. We have tons of ‘readings’ that flick a finger to copyright laws, but no Teaching Assistants (TAs) to make it more accessible. End semester exams are an exercise in rote learning and analysing patterns from the last ten years’ question papers. Everyone becomes a Data Scientist a night prior to the exam. Take that, Andrew Ng.
Academic disillusionment stems from a variety of factors. Let’s talk about teachers.
Even before the pandemic went ballistic, most students were dependent on ‘online’ resources to some extent. It varied from entire MIT OCW courses to poorly recorded YouTube videos of a hand scribbling on a ruled page. But again, whatever helps you get across the line, works.
What then, leads students to seek refuge in the deep, dense chambers of YouTube when they have PhD Professors at their disposal? You’ll get different answers from different people, but here’s an umbrella term- Disconnect. Most of the ‘permanent’ professors have been around for longer than the average student’s lifetime. They’ve seen it all- the good, the bad and the ugly of their discipline to a point where it becomes routine. But routine gets to even the most patient of human beings and at one point, we stop caring. And the end of the day, it’s a job, and while most of them do a pretty good job at delivering rinsed and repeated monologues, the thrill is gone. The flair that propelled them to their current stature has fizzled out. This sets up a ripple effect- the baton of disillusionment carried on and passed to the next generation of prospective professors. Again, there are exceptions, but we cannot quote them as examples. The disconnect between the teachers and the students might appear to be a ‘generation gap’ at first. But it’s more than that (let’s reserve this for another post).
It comes as no surprise, then, to see students developing escapist mechanisms to deal with the various forms of disillusionment and cultural shocks. While some submit to the gods of intoxication, others find refuge in the society circuits of Delhi University. Cue the statement about Venn diagrams.
One of DU’s redeeming aspect, the Extra-Curricular Activity (ECA) culture adds some colour to the otherwise black and white campus life (One can argue that Student Politics makes things spicy but, eh). You meet tons of talented people, who excel at their respective ECA. And more often than not, they teach you stuff you don’t learn in classrooms.
Some of them are so good that they start ‘earning’ prize money every month- enough to sustain one’s basic needs. Some go as far as pursuing two-three master’s degrees to stay in the circuit and thrive on validation and respect from their fellow juniors. Money can’t get you everything, after all.
But at the end of the day, that’s what makes this an experience worth having- bittersweet and imperfect, spontaneous yet serene.
