Why St. Stephens Must Change

It has been almost four months since I last had a blog entry. Yes, I must confess that I've grown old in this duration, and (much to the chagrin of my loving mother) thin too. I've come to St. Stephens College in Delhi (arguably one of the most reputed colleges in India) and I'm looking forward to making the best out of my years here.

What is my initial reaction to St. Stephens'? Well , it is just another college, yes, but what makes it different is that its reputation attracts a lot of good talent from all over India and competing and interacting with these minds actually broadens your horizons. Teaching-wise, St. Stephens is as good or as bad as any other regular Delhi University college. Infrastructure-wise, St. Stephens is quite terrible - the loos in the hostel are dirty, there is no power back-up and there is no air conditioning.

Unfortunately, there are many people in the college who are hanging to a sense of importance and a sense of exclusivity based on the past legacy of the college. For them, being a Stephenian makes them, by default, superior to people from other colleges. But what they must realise is that the past will long be forgotten, what will matter twenty years down the line is not Shashi Tharoor or Amitav Ghosh, but what we do today. The results of the college have not been too good of late, and unless we rid ourselves of the arrogance of being Stephenian, we won't be able to unlock our true potential.

Now let me get to other aspects of college life. The residence is a good place, in the sense that they don't stuff 3-4 people in a single room. Initially, it was a single room for each student, but today the first years have to share their rooms. But that is not really a problem, its a good learning experience in tolerance. Ragging, to begin with, was minimal (the routine song-dance) but later reduced to zero. The residence is a good place, and the rezzies are quite surely the cream of St. Stephens college, not because they've scored more than others (which they usually haven't) but because these men and women have a personality, a distinct personality.

In college, the Extra-Curriculars are extremely good. But there are a lot of, what I would call immature kids, who go to each and every society in that juvenile optimism that it'll look good on their CV. What they fail to understand is that in the long run, your CV is supposed to represent you, and not the other way round. So, I've joined just the societies that really interested me. But the society I most look forward to working for is the Finance and Investment Cell (FNIC), not only because its most professionally-run than other societies , but also because it has some amazing people at the helm.

How other colleges perceive St. Stephens' college? Well, most colleges give us importance that I feel we do not deserve in the first place. Every college takes St. Stephens as a benchmark, be it quizzing or debating or anything else. We've long back been upstaged by Hansraj in quizzing, and our grip on debating is also loosening. I do not take this to be a sad development. It is a stimulating thing to be overtaken by others, because that provides you with the next benchmark to strive for. If you don't have a goal, how can you go about doing your task?

So, as another term appears on the calendar entry, I am waiting eagerly to get back into the muck and work my way up. Why do I want to go up in the first place? Because I want to change things, because I want arrogance to be defeated, and because I want to pursue the truest form of education.