There comes a point in term when stress can threaten to overwhelm you. Perhaps it’s the threat of an impending deadline, or an unexpected crisis that arises just when you need to get on and work in the few weeks that Cambridge sets aside for its terms.

But what do we do when that threshold gets crossed? Sometimes, sat in front of your laptop screen for hours in the library, the inspiration does not come despite that essay deadline looming ever closer. Sometimes your emotional state and the requirement to produce a piece of work do not collide. What happens then?

Sometimes the people who should be the most forgiving in such circumstances – the DoSes, the supervisors – can make the situation that much worse. Recently this newspaper saw a supervision guidance sheet sent out to some students that was unhelpfully strong in its tone – supervisions could not be rearranged if students were ill, students would be charged if they missed supervisions for any circumstances other than a medical reason signed off by a qualified doctor, all written aggressively in a stream of boldface type and capital letters. Indeed, so crudely was the message hammered home that the very students who brought the document to our attention were so afraid of repercussions if they let us report how it had affected them, even anonymously, that they were unwilling to contribute any testimony to the story.

This puts a newspaper in a dilemma. Failure to report the story means those students may now have to spend the year with a supervisor whose initial tone they found so intimidating they felt unable to raise the issue with their colleges’ and the university’s support structures. But what if reporting the situation had provided no redress, and simply turned a supervisor-student relationship that was intimidating for the latter actively hostile for both?

Perhaps in such a situation abstraction is the only advisable approach. Shefali Kharabanda this week writes very eloquently on why we, as patchwork people, with our own desires, wishes, interests and passions, need to try and rise above the pressure that this institution puts on us so as not to lose sight of the fundamental questions. What do I want out of my time at this university? Am I working for my supervisor, or myself? What about life afterwards?

There is nothing like the pressure of an eight-week term to discourage such thinking. What a radical step it would be if we were to join together and make that leap.