Ramanujan College (DU) Delhi Campus Experience

I did my undergrad from Ramanujan College which is part of Delhi University. The college experience was overall a good one but compared to school I guess it was not that great. I graduated the year before Covid so I did get a chance to attend college for the entire three years.

Campus

Ramanujan is a young college, previously it was Deshbandhu Evening which later became a day college. So for the majority of my college years(until my final year) our campus was mostly under construction and we shared some infrastructure of Deshbandhu College, which was our neighbor.

Two of our computer Labs, Library, reading room, admin rooms, and Principal office were in Deshbandhu, we even conducted some of our indoor events in their auditorium.

But, our campus was completely separate by my final year. Even we had a wall in between our colleges which earlier had a small passage used by us to tread between colleges. Now two of our computer labs which were in Deshbandhu were shifted to the three-floor main building which was constructed by the end of the second year.

And our new Library, office, reading room, etc were moved to the portacabins which were behind the new building.

The classrooms for the majority of the first and second year were in porta cabins, but when you say porta cabins don’t think shabbily of them. They were well-furnished, tiled, and even had projectors in every single room.

Sports infrastructure on the other hand was abysmal. I was in the basketball team and there was no real basketball court, there was a makeshift court that was portable but no real ones, and we had to go to sports complexes for our practices with money out of our pockets.

The same was true for other sports except a few which don’t need much infrastructure. The college had a gym and was good at sports like weight lifting and boxing from my knowledge.

There were three computer labs when I was studying there with modern systems.

First-year experience

The first year experience was the most turbulent, my admission to the college was a little late because of the way DU handled admissions. So I joined the college almost after one month of opening. It was a little awkward for me to get into a new place after a month. There was an internal exam the day I joined the college(spoiler alert – I somehow did well on that test), and that’s how late I was. But things settled within a few months and the first year passed just like that.

Second-year Experience

The second year was mostly normal we didn’t have the freshness of the first years and were yet to have the gloom of the third years, somewhere in between. I didn’t get to join any society in the first years because of being late admission, but in the second year, I decided to join the basketball team and participated in trials which took place in a school(because our college had no court, remember?) where I was selected, in fact, all of us were selected because there were only twelve of us. So that started our basketball journey and we went for Inter-college in the north campus and got out in the first round itself. But we continued our practice for the next year.

Third year

The third year was pretty decent we all were trying to get the maximum out of our college and everyone was living the last year as if the last day, I was no different. I tried to sit through classes as much as I could, especially in the last semester. I was still in the college team and the practice was going on, most of the time overlapping with classes, but that was no issue since we had sports quota attendance. It was the last sem and we went for the Inter-college this year also and failed, but this time the failure was honorable and acceptable. After the match, practice ceased and I was back in classes, living the last days of my studenthood.

And just like that one, two, and three years passed.