Despite having being at Cambridge for almost three years, I still have yet to understand the delightfully disorientating Cambridge tradition of having to start my week on a Thursday. It perplexes me far too much and tends to leave me in a state of uncertainty about what week we might happen to be in.

However, this ignorance is usually broken about mid-way through term when we’re informed, through a variety of means, that it is Week 5. And what comes with Week 5? ‘Week 5 blues’ of course.

I have now witnessed eight sets of Week 5 and ‘Week 5 blues’. If you’re a fresher reading this, and wondering whether anything really changes, the short answer is no. At the same point every term, the same things are rolled out again and again; and every term I feel more and more disillusioned about how we deal with, and our collective attitude towards, mental health here in Cambridge.

Don’t get me wrong, Week 5 falls just after the half-way point in our eight-week terms. It is not surprising that at this point in term quite a lot of people tend to feel tired, fed up and pretty pissed off with Cambridge life.

The inherent problem lies not with Week 5, but with the concept of ‘Week 5 blues’ and how we, as a group, seem to put it on a pedestal and pander to it literally every time Week 5 appears. The only reason I know it’s Week 5 is not because I’ve been counting, or suddenly figured out how to deal with starting my week on a Thursday, but because ‘Week 5 blues’ will suddenly be thrown at you from every possible angle.

Week 5 is generally brought to my attention by a combination of three elements. First, almost every Cambridge-related email that drops into my Hermes account will include comments of an ostensibly cheery nature such as, “hope you’re surviving Week 5!” or “banish those Week 5 blues by coming along to [said inspirational/happy event]”.

Secondly, it is possible your supervisor will take on a more lenient and sympathetic attitude. Getting an extension during Week 5 tends to be more easily achieved than in if it were in Week 2 or 7. A previous supervisor even had the foresight to plan ahead at the start of each term for the apparently ‘inevitable’ Week 5 ‘blip’. Apparently to ask for an extension then would be deemed perfectly reasonable. All I remember thinking was what about the other seven weeks of term…

Thirdly, the nature of welfare provision in colleges tends to change in order to accommodate those dreaded ‘Week 5 blues’. Positively themed events, or an increased number of events are often put on and special ‘Week 5 packs’ might be delivered to your pidge.

Now, of course, these elements are all well-intended, and welfare provision in particular, comes from a genuine concern for students’ well-being. The fact that welfare provision runs across the year and not just in Week 5 is of course testament to this fact.

But, to put it bluntly, ‘Week 5 blues’ trivialises and detracts attention from the experiences of those struggling to cope with mental health issues. It suggests that mental health has a timetable when, in reality, every day of every week is a struggle for some students here. We do ourselves no favours by collectively pretending through the employment of ‘Week 5 blues’ that it is only during this one specific point in term that we struggle. The mind-set it appears to suggest is that only during Week 5 is it okay not to be okay. For all other seven weeks of term, we are tasked with the duty of ensuring the mask does not slip, lest we reveal the inner turmoil that rages just below the surface.

The concept of ‘Week 5 blues’ seems to presume that when the following Thursday rolls around denoting the beginning of Week 6, we all ‘snap back’ to some previous state of apparent ‘happiness’ and ‘satisfaction’. The concept is cleverly crafted to fit with the current Cambridge mind-set; intense eight week terms leave little room for students to take time out and genuinely assess their life and well-being. ‘Week 5 blues’ grants us a narrow reprieve in which we can collectively vocalise and deal with perhaps a few issues or worries. Those not dealt with, which is likely to be the majority, are all neatly packaged up and placed carefully at the back of our minds, just in time for the start of Week 6.

It is time that we truly and genuinely reassess the concept of ‘Week 5 blues’ and stop using it as an excuse to ignore and trivialise the deeply important issues surrounding mental health and wellbeing. The #NotJustFive campaign run by Student Minds, which challenges the concept of ‘Week 5 blues’ and our perceptions of it, is a huge step in the right direction. Raising awareness of mental health, and getting more people to vocalise and discuss their experiences, is perhaps the only way we can truly change and improve our attitudes towards mental health and well-being.