The best of my youth.

Well done Loyola I'm always proud about you. I learnt a lot from them and the early molding of seeing and being with professors who dedicated their lives to the subjects they loved was very inspiring.

I had got very low marks in my 12th standard public exam. 874 / 1200 is not the stuff that you can exactly boast about to any of your relatives or friends. I attended the college interview with fingers crossed. I had got good marks in the Chemistry exam and those were the days there was a mad rush for Computer science as well. I had secured 187 in Computer Science and 158 in Chemistry. I wanted Computer Science, but I knew I won't be selected. So I intentionally ticked "Chemistry" as the stream that I wanted to join. The Principal drilled me as to why I preferred Chemistry over Computer science as Chemistry is vague and computers were interesting. I wanted to get in to this college quite desperately and I said "Chemistry" is a mixture of "Cherry" and "Mist" . I knew it was a dumb explanation (which I learnt from my chemistry teacher), but the principal smiled patiently at him and said he will give me a seat in the Chemistry department. He was keen to know how and what I did in the Chemistry practicals and the outcome of it which I did explained quite clearly.

It was comprehensive, exhaustive and integrated. It was based on credit system for this 3 year course. 90 credits were needed to clear and get the degree 5 papers would focus on the main subject while you had an option to choose your own elective. The papers would take care of 13-15 credits in a semester and there was an extra option of studying something that would really intrigue you options ranged from "Indian History", "Basic French", "Astronomy" to name a few courses. Usually, a person would easily get 100 credits by the time he completes the 3 year course it was well balanced and it was a fantastic concept to begin with.

Yes, the college provided internship to be honest, I don't fully remember the details it had a dual system where it provided a particular amount to the under privileged based in chennai and provided slightly increased amount to people based out of chennai.

Back in those days, I was not sure about campus interview i mean those were the days where we were exposed to the Dolby Digital system from a movie called "Speed" (Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock) so the campus interviews were relatively unknown and new to me back then, But I knew for sure that Loyolaites were respected all over India.

Yes, cultural events were celebrated with a bang in our college all the students from the different departments will get a stage to showcase their wonderful talent. This has produced many talented artistes and directors to the tamil filmdom. Lot of film personalities were invited and the festival atmosphere was unbelievable. The vibe and the atmosphere were completely different when it was gala time and you could actually feel it.

Yes, it was feasible. If I remember correctly, the semester fees was around Rs. 800. Only the fees for the Computer science department was on the higher side which was Rs.4000 per month. This was followed by another department which had made its debut. That was the Visual Communication department that had almost Rs.3000 per month as the fee. Mostly, it was feasible for the middle class category.

Nope. I did not avail any loan facility as I came from a family which had no problems in shelling out Rs.800 per semester.

Extra curricular activities were always held in high regard inside the campus. Actually 3 - 6 credits were allocated to these activities and everybody took this seriously. NCC, NSS come to my mind quite instantaneously. Sports was a serious subject. Cricket was a major priority and equal importance was given to other sports like Football, hockey, basketball etc. Labs were usually taken by the students and was a regular in our college. Debates were encouraged by the respective teachers in the respective departments.

As you might be aware Loyola college was run by christian catholic group of Fathers well, there was a separate hostel for the going-to-be Fathers and they served pork there. Many pigs used to smile at me from their sty.The food quality was the best and ve

The seniors were very cooperative. There was no ragging and it was a serious offense in our campus so there was not always a lot of ease in interacting with the senior students.

It wasn't chilled out it was lot of hard work and we loved to work hard and earn the marks. There was no reason for the exam committee to keep it chilled out for the students. But hard work had no substitutes it was a 3 hour exam and we had play out of ou

The standards of the teacher were usually the best and they believed in giving their best for example, if it was a tamil teacher they used to talk in pure tamil and also used to take time to do a movie review or a drama play review which used to make any