Getting there...

Hindi paper gives her the jitters

By Kiran Wadhwa

Akshata Hiranandani has been sleeping for six hours every night for the past one month. For the last one year, all she has done is shuttle between tuitions. But she is not complaining.

“It is only one year of hard work and if you do well in Class 10, you are set for life. Also, first year of college will make up for all the lost fun,” she said.

While the rest of the ICSE exam pattern is perfect, Hiranandani’s greatest fear is the second language paper: “The Hindi grammar and prose paper is combined into one three-hour long paper. The thought is frightening.” When she gets really stressed, she goes for a walk or calls up her friends and has one of those ‘how much have you studied?’ conversations.

But as she battles the butterflies in her stomach, the 14-year-old is looking forward to college life. “Getting into the right college with the right kind of crowd is important. For Arts, there is nothing better than Xavier’s. Commerce has a lot of good colleges like NM, HR and Jai Hind,” she said.

12 hours a day, every day

By Snehal Rebello

Noopur Yadav, Class 12 student of SIES College, sits with her books every morning at 11 am thinking “less than one month left for the exams”, only to feel better after 12 hours of revision for the day.

With syllabus change across streams, Yadav, an Arts student, said there was no way to gauge questions. “Our teachers have provided us with a question bank. Besides, the college has had a lot of tests through the year. But at the end of the day, they too are not sure of what will appear,” said Yadav, who is worried about Economics and French.

The 18-year-old planned her study schedule soon after she got hold of her exam timetable. “I am concentrating more on History and Psychology since there are no holidays for these subjects,” she said.

Her stressbusters: several cups of coffee, listening to music, reading the newspapers or simply chatting with her mom and friends.