College Review: St. Frances Junior College

If St. Francis Junior College and St. Francis Degree College were sisters, they would be as similar as Sheryl Crow and Toni Braxton. They both can make you hum a tune (or a hymn), but that’s as far as the similarity goes. If you’re looking for a hint of the elder one in the younger sibling, look out the window, cos that’s where the rest of it has gone. Take out your notepads, folks, and whether you believe it or not, the following statement is true. Students of this junior college, actually like their college.

This is as opposed to purely liking being from their college, liking the crowd, or liking this or liking that. They actually like their college. It’s that simple. The ‘why’ is the complicated part.

SFJC is one left-and-right turn too many away, to describe how to get there. If you’re going there for the first time, just land up near Sangeet, (Rezimental Baazar would be closer) and ask your way there.

Whenever one thinks “convent school”, one word immediately comes to mind. Discipline. This one is no different. It’s walled in, as if it’s the college that Bush is after, and not oil. It’s walled out, as if the students (or their teachers) have actually discovered some oil, are rushing to get out with it. There’s just no overlooking the wall and its gate. Seriously.

Getting inside, a lot of what you’ll see, depends on the time of the day or year that you arrive. If you arrive at anytime during the day, its fine - you’ll see a smattering of kids all over, but with most of them tucked away in what they would like to describe as ‘academic pursuits’. But at around 3 of the clock, as soon as you enter through the fortress, you will find another wall. This time, it’s a moving, breathing, and a highly impatient wall. For this is the hour of independence, ushered in by a single watchman. Many a plan to give that lone warrior the slip has been hatched and thwarted. But the girls of SFJC still like college.

The students of the college - resplendent with a Resident ‘Hitler’ - find a lot to cheer. There are the usual idiosyncrasies of the teaching faculty, which amuse the young students to no end. One “desi-videsi” lecturer goes “Yes, what do you have in your ‘packet’?”, when the subject the distinguished academician is actually broaching, is the child’s ‘pocket.’ Then there is someone who goes “Swish-jer-land” instead of you know what. Of course, it doesn’t beat the Raja Babu of HPS fame, who goes “open the window…let the ‘weather’ come in”, but it’s still fun.

French classes can be fun too, especially with “bon jour madam” greeting, which gets morphed into “bon jour ‘badam’”, later degenerating into pista, kishmish, and other such items of dry fruit nature.

If the students are any judge, then we’d go on record saying what St. Francis does have, are some teachers of excellence in the subjects of Civics, English, History, Commerce. However, all lecturers, without bias to subject, are said to be extremely approachable.

The infrastructure is basic, with a small isolated one room canteen, various labs, library, and the multi specialty playground. By that, we mean a basketball court, a volleyball court and other such courts all pressed into one small rectangle, with Mother Mary on the side as the constant audience and supporter. However, after paucity of space, there comes a paucity of time. Students are expected to spend whatever free periods out of the 7 classes that they have daily, in … inhale sharply… the library. There are always some exceptions. But those are generally restricted to the students, and never the rules.

The crowd is supposed to be very good here. Inspite of the top down orders of wearing only Shalwar Kurta’s, you’ll still be able to spot a wide variety of students. The girls try to make up for the uniformity in clothes, by trying out various footwear, face wear, head wear, hair wear, hand wear, and God only knows what other wear. These girls are are young women, and probably only they themselves and Mother Mary can understand the lot completely. That said, people are ‘humble’ here, and making friends is a breeze. They candidly admit that they have “more rules than degree college”, but that “it’s good to have rules… you don’t go wrong.”

Computers are not a strong point here, but easily over looked by the range of extra-curricular activities on offer. First off, they have a cultural week every year, where compettitions are held in all sorts of group song and dance events. The buzz in the college at this time is loud enough to ring your home doorbell.

Then there are the christmas compettitions, where events like flower arrangement, icing the cake, vegetable carving, painting, sketching and tie & dye are held. In further addition, there is genuine individual compettitions like elecution, debates, extempo speeches, dance and drama, which are held all through the year.

The girls indeed feel lucky to have joined such a place, and not a ‘corporate college’ where the only emphasis is on ‘cracking’ some common tests. But before you start increduously thinking whether any of the studies that occur in those 7 classes everyday actually result to something, you can pause a bit. SFJC has produced its fair share of state rankers, in both academic and professional examinations. A highlight of the study system here is that there are after hours ‘remedial classes’ for the weaker students conducted by the regular faculty, totally free of charge. In fact, sometimes even a group of girls who are toppers stay back and help with the classes themselves!

The school stresses on “value oriented education” and “stress free education” for all its 1,000 students, and with one look at the girls, you’ll think that this discription hits bang on. Value classes and co-operative classes are held every week, where the students learn from short stories, or just sit and freely discuss issues relevant to them.

In short, SFJC would not be the place to go to if IIT or EAMCET is all that you or your parents can think, dream, or salivate about, nor would it exactly give you the time or the place to “disco”. But it will certainly ensure that your last years of schooling, (in a girls-only environment) remain memorable for life.