Rosie Best

Visiting family, catching up on work, having a lie-in... does any of this sound familiar? Probably not. Although reading weeks are no longer exclusively for reading, their implementation is considered equally vital at almost every university across the country, with the usual exception of Oxbridge.

Currently, our version of a reading week is the Week Five Blues. When this phenomenon was first described to me as a fresher I pictured a huge blue-grey rain cloud hovering and continually raining over Cambridge for a week, casting a blue tinge over everything, while my friends elsewhere sat contentedly at home perusing their text books in the metaphorical, banished sun. As the year progressed, I realised that this idea wasn’t actually all that far from the truth. But we acknowledged it and called it the Week Five Blues, so it was all good.

It has long been a generally accepted (if not scientifically proven) fact that Cambridge is a place of warped time and perspectives – terms feel simultaneously drawn-out and rushed, and a standard day involves little or no human interaction. A reading week would give us an opportunity to burst our individual Cambridge bubbles, re-discover reality and engage with the real world.

Whether or not a reading week is actually used for reading is entirely unimportant. Affording Cambridge students a reading week would grant us all permission to relax – something a lot of us deny ourselves much too often during our time here.

Imagine waking up on a Monday morning, not full of dread at the prospect of spending an entire day glued to your usual library spot but to the promise of a day devoted to that series Netflix keeps recommending, or to punting down the Cam and exploring parts of Cambridge you never even knew existed. Needing a break from the intensity of our workload with activities such as these does not make us lazy, it makes us human.

The inclusion of a reading week in the structure of our terms would not simply be about allowing us more time to make the most of our university experience – both academically and socially – but would represent a consideration of student welfare and wellbeing. While it could not be said that a reading week would solve all of Cambridge’s problems, it would be a significant start.

 

Lana Crowe

Granting a reading week to a Cambridge student is like offering a paracetamol to someone who has just spontaneously combusted. It is a futile attempt at sweeping the detritus that comes from being overworked and underappreciated under the carpet.

Forget a reading week; instead, give me a room that isn’t below ground level, an occasional word of praise and enough term time to actually do all of my work, please.

“It’s a vacation, not a holiday.” This phrase is often heard reverberating through colleges as the end of term approaches, echoing down arched pathways and straight into the nightmares of students. Bank holidays are not welcome here. Weekends are not ‘work ends’. If reading week is code for ‘week off’ in other universities, you can bet your bottom dollar that wouldn’t be the case here. A reading week would become an excuse for supervisors to expect even more work than usual, without the distraction of lectures and supervisions.

It is not as if a replica May Week would be pasted into the middle of every term. Work would not be finished, merely paused. A reading week would just encourage students to run away from their stresses and bury their heads in the Netflix-and-alcohol-flavoured sand. The quality of my work often improves as the weeks go on: it is at week five that I have finally figured out the minimum amount of waking hours needed to complete my work to a decent standard. Having a reading week would interrupt my routine: I would regress to 1pm lie-ins and have to begin the morning struggle all over again. Plus, when we all undergo our own Doctor Who-style regenerations – known to some as graduating – and plummet into the world of employment, we will not be lucky enough to have a week’s holiday every month.

The reason Cambridge does not have a reading week is because our terms are only eight weeks long – almost half that of some other institutions. A reading week is often perceived as a panacea, a magic bullet that will relieve all of our problems. It is not the absence of this reading week that causes so much stress. If we can’t get through four weeks without crumbling, then there’s something seriously wrong with the system.