In week 7 of Michaelmas, I sent myself home to have my first day completely off work during term since I started at university, planning to return after. For those who remember Michaelmas last year – after a year of lockdowns, freshers' flu hit everyone, including non-freshers hard. We spent the term hacking our lungs up in lectures, going on and coming off antibiotics, and consuming a concoction of caffeine and painkillers to push through.

I’m not someone who has ever been good at dedicating time to rest, and have subsequently had to learn to do it, but I got so ill I paid the £70 train fare home hoping for some sympathy and soup. Unfortunately, my body had other ideas and what I got was a week-long stay in (underfunded with overworked staff) Devon hospitals, and the beginning of a year of chronic illness. They couldn’t find a diagnosis at the time, but I had strep and scarlet fever. I’ll spare you the photos I took in an attempt to make light of the situation, but Cambridge actually managed to bring me down with a Dickensian disease that I thought only sickly Victorian children got.

I won’t blame the workload entirely. I had done the classic thing of taking on far too many extracurriculars, a bit too much fun and not enough sleep. But even if I hadn’t done this much, the Cambridge term is far too demanding that we are never afforded the time to listen to our bodies and rest. Had the first time I had a chest infection, or tonsillitis that term, I actually been able to take a full day's rest, I may not have had the frankly quite traumatic year I’ve just had. Cambridge allows for absolutely no bodily "imperfection", we are expected to ignore its calls to rest, to enjoy life to the fullest and instead train ourselves to be confined to a desk in a library from morning to evening.

The sense of superiority that students derive from this ability to undergo this robotic transformation of their bodies to churn out essay after essay for 8 weeks straight, is not something to celebrate. Why do we hail the ultimate achievement as the capacity to deny ourselves balanced lives and push through illness? There is absolutely no shame in resting, it’s no indication of inferior intelligence, and our grades shouldn’t have to suffer as a result of recognising this. 

The University ought to promote healthy work-life balances

But it is this fast pace of life, high intensity and pressure to really relax or have fun when we’re not working to make it worth it, that means we’re not really even resting when we’re trying. The emotional swings of termly life requires that even when we are seeking balance, we settle on something restless.

The ironic thing is that this ascetic grindset that has Cambridge as an institution and students in its grip, isn’t even conducive to producing the best work or our best selves. How can we be creative, and push the boundaries of academia, and truly have time to critically engage and immerse ourselves in the literature if we are forced to churn out a 2000 word essay, and turn immediately to a new topic? I absolutely love my course, and I love how many exciting opportunities Cambridge has given me to learn from absolute legends within the field. But it would be wonderful to be afforded the chance to really sit with these ideas.

We need, with it, greater opportunity for our own self-development and exploration, which is such an integral part of the experience of coming into adulthood whilst at University, and just as valuable as any strictly academic aspect of our degree. What does this intensity really prepare us for, other than to accept awful working conditions and bodily regulation for the rest of our lives?

The most mind boggling permutation of this very Cambridge self-denial is the broad acceptance of what is essentially a recognised week of depression in week five, when everyone else gets a reading week and designated time of rest. Every term, like clockwork, "week 5 blues" hit as students withdraw from social life and are buried under their work. Yet despite this, the University is sending the message that they wish to see a "reduced workload" instead.

All of the criticisms aimed at a reading week, including fears that supervisors will continue to set work, people won’t use it to "properly" rest (whatever that means) will not be solved by a "reduced workload" – whilst the institution continues to place such intense pressure on students for "high performance". Academic surveillance and chastising students who get a 2.ii only heightens the immense pressures which Cambridge students place upon themselves. The admissions process ensures that those who are students here are already high-performing, motivated and engaged students. So the University ought to promote healthy work-life balances to help them thrive.

Cambridge is trapped in a self-regulating mindset of punishment, and we buy into it. We punish ourselves with more and more work, and we are punished if we fail to adhere to this self-regulation. It shouldn’t take me getting an essentially eradicated disease, and the cycle of an incapacity to eat, move or swallow, antibiotics, and "recovery" until my surgeries this summer to call for us all to have a chance to rest. The psychological toil, let alone physical toil of this has been immense and it's not something I should have to implore people to have empathy for. Yet it seems that I do, because we are stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of suffering in the name of academic rigour – and we must escape