The Real Ups and Downs of the First DU College

My interest in the practical aspects of psychology like mentalism, counselling, biopsychology, therapy, etc. is what drew my attention to the subject. For the most part, it was my curiosity regarding the mind and its workings. The curriculum in itself is mostly focused on building our theoretical knowledge base regarding the field and exposing us to the scope of the field. It focuses more on research exposure than practical exposure. There is not much importance given to internships. If the curriculum exposed us more to the relevant literature texts, fieldwork, psychological testing, psychodiagnostics, field visits and important readings such as DSM, it would be of much help in the professional realm. There must be more emphasis placed on qualitative research, research paper reading and writing. The exams in themselves are not that difficult, however the professors tend to cut marks for irrelevant reasons. We have an internal one hour test for every subject at whatever date decided upon by the professors. In the same way, tutorials are conducted. Practicals are only conducted on dates agreed upon with the external examiner and theory exams' datasheet is decided upon by the university.

The placement cell is quite active in updating students regarding internships and placements. However, I have not participated in college placements. I had previously participated in placements offered by the North Camous and got placed at a Career Development Centre.

The year-wise fee structure is quite honestly unpredictable and frustrating. It keeps increasing every year course-wise and year-wise. In my first year, I paid 14K covering all college expenses (excluding examination fees). In my second year (current year) I paid more than 16K for the same. Among my peers, I am unaware of those who have availed of scholarships. However, the University charges the same classroom, development, tuition, etc. fees from students across all admission categories, be they General, EWS, ECA, SC/ST, OBC or other. Examination fees cost 1710 INR if only the papers for the current semester have been opted for examination. For extra improvement or back examinations, students must pay an extra 500INR per theory paper and 200INR per practical paper. Needless to say, the growing fees is a cause of immediate concern for many students across the University.

There are not a lot of festivals that take place in my college. However, Zeenat is a fest organised by our evening college which occurred after 4 years last year. The most memorable part of the fest was "Qawali Nights". The science fest took place in April 2024. The science block and all the science departments, including the psychology department, participated in making the fest memorable in ways I cannot explain. There are quite a lot of all the needed books in our college library. This is an aspect of our college that I am proud of. They are also actively updating the range of sources and the database. The issue, re-issue and return system is straightforward and flexible. In our department, there are hp laptops available for any student or staff member who might need them for college work purposes and for streaming to the entire class. Whenever there is a technological difficulty or fault, it takes no time in being fixed. There is a lack of sports activities in out college campus. There are no annual sports days or the like. However, there is a football team and a cricket which largely function independently unless they require the college's support. There are quite a lot of societies in our college. The most prominent ones are the Western and Indian dance and music societies and the debating society. However, the western dance and indian music societies are significantly inconsiderate of other aspects of student lives such as academics and other priorities.

I only applied to one other college- Ambedkar University where I got rejected. I do not know what went wrong, but it might as well have been my CUET score which was not high enough. Currently, there is no knowledge of the eligibility criteria for my college. All that is known is that students must have a significantly high CUET score to enter UOD.

There are 10 professors in the Psychology department and 200 students from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years. Most of them make sure to include students in discussions and teachings during class and otherwise as well. One of our permanent professors teaches in her expertise so well that it feels like we might not need an internship to gain practical experiences regarding psychodiagnostic but we only need her classes for the same. One of our new professors, who is also an alumnus from the 2017 batch, is going out of his way to help students with anything that they would want to know, helps them through their entrances and shows them how to write their examinations. Some of our professors, on the other hand, come to college and conduct classes for the sake of it. Another permanent and a new professor only awards marks to students whose faces they might see every day or who reply to their absurd questions. These professors are more worried about their salaries and attendance than they are about their students who are willing to learn. They arrive for class, speak, mark attendance, and leave. There are 7 papers and their examinations every semester. Most of them focus more on the theoretical aspect of psychology without much practical exposure. Cognitive and Introduction to Psychology were two subjects with practicals that exposed us to nearly real-world scenarios. Some subjects also have tutorial components instead of practical components where we usually create a PPT and present it. Some other subjects like Paradigmatic Foundations of Psychological Inquiry gave us a much needed push towards understanding research and hypothesis testing. Statistics is another subject that really helped us understand the nature of hypothesis testing. These are somewhat easy and somewhat difficult. There is quite a lot of unending content but it is sometimes hard to remember. There are 3 discipline specific courses every semester and 4 elective courses, most of which are largely irrelevant.

The college closes at 9 pm as we are comprised of morning and evening counterparts. It is not a boarding college so we do not know much about the nightlife. However, the campus area has very well-visited spots such as Daryaganj, MAMC, Firoz Shah Kotla, Lal Qila, Jama Masjid, etc. This also comes with the risk of being located at the border of Old and New Delhi. Old Delhi is very well known for being a very unsafe place for women, with places like Paharganj and GB road right beside the college.