Your first lesson at Cambridge is that you aren’t the only one to have been smart, or consistent, or taken on way too much and thrived in spite of it all (or even because of it all). But exceptionalism takes no prisoners. So if academic excellence is no longer what gives you that rush, perhaps your discipline can. Perhaps your body can.

Perfectionism, as some polymaths I have spoken to attest, can seep into every corner of your life. But there is something specific about the physical nature of exercise. Obviously, it releases dopamine. It gets your mind off stress. But exercise plans also offer structure, break your time into sessions, distances, splits. It not only calms the overactive mind, but gives that mind something to dominate. You can apply the same high standards from your academic life to your fitness life, and begin to reap rewards from your suffering – not in that strange, delayed realm of mark schemes and feedback, but right in the intimacy of your person.

Most people I have spoken to tell me they find it a useful outlet. Some are wary of my expectation to find evidence strong enough to justify the word ‘addiction’. Exercise becomes such an ‘addiction’ when more and more is needed to achieve the same sense of relief, when other activities shrink around it, when a routine begins to feel compulsive. But I have found that most people at Cambridge think they have healthy relationships with the gym and their exercise. They agree that the gym improves their mental health, but insist that it isn’t a trade-off for the ‘big things’ in their lives.

“The stifling competitive environment of our academic system can thus find a mirror, or a new arena, in sports”

If exercise is a helpful outlet for so many, it seems unfair to call a passion for it excessive, or disordered. So where do we draw the line?

Overemphasis on aesthetics is a part of it. This is a time charged with the need to go out, mingle, look good doing it. When so much of our hard work is hidden in libraries and essays, a fit body is a visible proof of private efforts. Dedication can be an attractive trait. So can seeming resilient, low-maintenance, and ascetically hard on yourself. In fact, university itself heralds the arrival of a sudden wealth of overwhelming changes – not least the chance to independently decide where, when, and with whom you spend your time. How much of that newly found free time could you put towards making yourself perfect?

I suppose this returns me to what our ‘big things’ are. Your priorities can narrow sharply when left to your own devices. Your degree becomes an obvious anchor. But then what? You can invest in friendships, societies, work, creative endeavours. Yet how many of these offer the same tangible sense of progress? When another application goes down the drain, and another night out underwhelms you, does that have to mean that you are doomed to float aimlessly through a realm without metrics, milestones, or measurable proofs of worth?

“Any hobby is dangerous when taken beyond moderation – and I think right now exercise is a particularly fraught one”

With only a grade as an obvious target to work towards, you can start to live an incredibly cerebral life. Then your body can appear to offer a freshly immediate arena of agency. When the centre of your life, your degree, starts to feel uncontrollable, why not show yourself, someone, anyone, that you can still call the shots about something?

Cambridge is full of former prodigies playing long-form endurance games of acceptance. Since we don’t offer US-style scholarships demanding excellence in chosen sports, dedication remains largely a matter of choice. The stifling competitive environment of our academic system can thus find a mirror, or a new arena, in sports.

As high achievers, many of us feel perversely proud of our capacity to suffer, to not have slept last night, to have forgotten to eat all day. The sense that your body is something to be negotiated with in order to get the work done can, of course, tip towards addiction, making that itself an identity. But we have to remind ourselves that these things are supposed to be fun.

A wish, or sometimes a requirement, to be at a lower weight in order to improve sports performance can become a gateway into unhealthy eating habits. This feels especially dangerous now, with the prevalence of ‘looksmaxxing’ and ‘skinnytok’ content as we come to the climax of an insidious obsession with protein, ‘toning’, and bodily discipline. But my argument isn’t only about how ambitious students are more vulnerable to self-destructive behaviours. It’s about how ‘exercise addiction’, even in its looser forms, allows the student who is already willing to suffer for their degree to suffer in a way that can be visible and mistakenly praised as health, or even romanticised for just how unhealthy it is.

In our cultural moment, the distance between self-improvement and willing self-destruction is becoming horrifically thin. I have great empathy for the desire to prove your self-control in a volatile world, and exercise is definitely not bad. But any hobby is dangerous when taken beyond moderation – and I think right now exercise is a particularly fraught one.