Recently, I haven’t been feeling well. Unfortunately, this isn’t very interesting when everyone in the entire city of Cambridge seems to be ill, particularly in Michaelmas. This is a dreadful state of affairs. As anyone who grew up with siblings will know, there is nothing worse than the people you live with deciding to be ill at the same time as you – and thus completely stealing all the attention. You tell your flatmates you are ill and they inevitably respond with “Oh, me too,” and not “How dreadful! How could such horrors befall on such a noble creature? Let me drop everything to take care of you in this moment of need. No, don’t worry about washing up all your spoons. I will do that for you”.

So I’m ill, it’s not interesting, and I still have to work. Yet, in a cruel twist of fate, illness does in fact make it more difficult to work. This is a fact I have to repeatedly relearn, kicking and screaming as I do. Letting illness affect my studies feels like a personal failure. Sure, it’s not my fault I’m ill. But despite this, I should somehow be able to grimace through the pain and write the best essay. Work isn’t impressive if you aren’t suffering for it. And the only time I spend not working should be spent having the absolute best time ever – living up to the expectations of uni, because life is inevitably over when I leave. But I’m not having the best time ever.

“The perilous expedition to the library (about 3 minutes away from my bed) had completely floored me”

I’m looking at Instagram reels (couldn’t even tell you what they are about, because they disappear from my memory as soon as I scroll away, leaving behind only a black hole of wasted time). I’m texting my mum, and then ignoring her advice to call the doctors, because I don’t have time to do that when I’m supposed to be working. I’m eating stale bread and all of my chocolate collection like I’m out for revenge. I’m going to a kitchen that isn’t mine and filling up a hot water bottle only to spill the water all over the floor and then just stare blankly at the little lagoon I’ve created, with not a single thought running through my head (I’m really sorry, people upstairs).

Last year, I was very ill and bed-bound for two days, but still managed to just about scrape together an essay. For some reason, this wasn’t good enough for me. Writing an essay in between hours of YouTube reels didn’t count as grinding. I therefore decided I needed to really lock in for the last hour, so I got myself out of bed and walked to the library. In the process, I forgot to take the crucial step of looking in the mirror to check if I had the appropriate amount of clothes on (to my later horror – I did not). Yet the perilous expedition to the library (about three minutes away from my bed) had completely floored me, and I found myself unable to properly read the swirly lines appearing on my screen.

“I was on death’s door, and valiantly using my last life force to write a terrible essay without proper paragraphs”

So, I had to send the unedited (nonsensical) essay to my supervisor with an explanatory email. I couldn’t just say “sorry I was feeling ill” – that didn’t capture the gravity of the situation. Everyone in Cambridge is ill. He had to know I wasn’t like other students; I don’t just get a cough and call it quits. I was on death’s door, and valiantly using my last life force to write a terrible essay without proper paragraphs. The problem is that in our polite, British society, you aren’t supposed to give people (especially your supervisor) gory details about your afflictions. Thus, to subtly capture the seriousness of my condition, I penned the fabulous lines “Sorry, this essay is bad. I am in great pain. I can’t edit it because I can’t read.” My supervisor, probably slightly disturbed, suggested we should probably just cancel the supervision tomorrow.

This is all a bit pathetic. There were no rewards for my martyrdom. The workload at Cambridge is intense, but you can make life a lot harder for yourself when you let your ego tell you you’re above rest. And so, if you, the reader, are very ill (because, of course you are, copycat), my amazing and original advice is to go back to bed. Tell your supervisor you can’t write the essay; most of them are pretty forgiving. Close your eyes and do nothing. I, of course, am not going to follow this advice, but you can be better than I am.