Burning the midnight oil

Students preparing for a competitive or a professional exam often burn the midnight oil but Agra's Institute of Engineering technology has added a unique feather to its cap by conducting all examinations at midnight, says Vijay Upadhyay

We have all heard of marathon teaching sessions running through the night, held by aspiring tutors who wish to create new, yet whimsical records. But an engineering institute in Agra seems to have broken all records by holding all its examinations at midnight and that too, sometimes without electricity.

In a most interesting development in the already awry examination schedule of the university, the examinations for BTech. students in the Institute of Engineering Technology at the Khandari campus of the Agra University have been whimsically rescheduled by the University to be held at 9 pm in the night with the examination often getting delayed in the absence of question papers.

But the worst hit are the BTech. (Part - Time) students whose examinations often end around midnight, throwing the students in a bout of frenzy over the haphazard way examinations were being conducted at the university. On Tuesday last week, the problems of these students who are already struggling with a drastic modification in their sleep cycle, faced a typical problem, when to top the problems of the students giving the examination in a state of half-sleep, even the power failed at the institute, immersing the examinees in complete darkness for almost 15 minutes while the teachers tried to get the single generating set started in the absence of the junior staff. Immediately after the genset was started, the teachers rushed back into the room to see if any copies were missing, though instead, they were face to face with sweat-drenched students tried to fan away the humid heat with their answer sheets.

Talking to The Pioneer, Sakeena Dev, acting Director, IET, said that the examination was to begin at 6 pm as scheduled and to end by 9 pm but due to a fight that broke out among some students and an institute teacher over copying in the examination, the examination could only begin at 8 pm after the dispute was settled and for that reason alone, it continued till 11 pm. Clarifying on the power failure during examination she said that power failures were a regular feature in Agra and due to some technical snag in the generator, it took some time in starting the generator though the sanctity of the examination was not compromised.

According to some sources at the institute, the real reason for the unordained delay in the examination was due to the fact that the question papers for the university exams were being prepared and printed "on-the-fly" by the institute directors, a process that takes atleast three hours, delaying the examination.