Maria Eapen had a bright smile on her face as she emerged out of the Toc-H Public School auditorium after the first of the CBSE Class XII Board exams that got under way on Friday.
And that pretty much settled the nerves of her father Eapen Vettath Eapen who had come on leave from Coimbatore just to be with his daughter on the first day of her all-important examinations.
“The exam was pretty good and I finished it in the nick of the time. The bell went off as soon as I finished writing,” said Maria, a student of Bhavan’s Vidya Mandir, Girinagar.
“The questions were relatively easy. As I have this habit of writing lengthy answers, I had to squeeze out time to answer them all,” said Pallavi S., a student of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Vaduthala. Shilpa George and Anjali Bhat of Bhavan’s Vidya Mandir, Girinagar, were confident about their performance. “There was no issue of time. But we can’t predict the marks we are going to score,” said Shilpa. Rohit Tony, a student of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Vaduthala, felt the exam was alright. “It was not completely easy as there were some indirect questions,” he said.
Arjun Surendran, a student of Campion School who left two questions unanswered, was not ready to do a post-mortem of the exam.
He was just relieved that he had got one exam out of the way. Poornima of Nalanda Public School was happy that her preparations for the exam paid off.
“It always helps when you start off the exams in a confident manner. I am now going to work harder for the rest of the exams,” she said.
Prathibha V, an English faculty at Bhavan’s Vidya Mandir, Girinagar, said the paper was relatively easy with hardly any out of syllabus questions being asked.
“It all boils down to how well students have prepared. One never gets full marks for English, but it’s possible to secure 90 per cent or more in this paper,” she said.
Toc-H Public School was the centre for 434 students of four schools in the city.