In passing, friends often bemoan how their partners at other universities get a week off, mid-term, to, in essence, prat around. The deified ‘reading week’. I have always held my tongue: I was previously of the un-woke position that a ‘reading week’ would lower Oxford’s standards, making us lazier, more apathetic, and if I’m quite honest about what I thought, more like them, the non-Oxbridge masses. Get out of the kitchen if you can’t handle the heat, I thought. Well, sometimes life proves you very, very wrong.
This all started with a breakup, hardly a delight for anybody, but particularly ruinous for those of us who have to pop sertraline daily. Then, I was bereaved. This has, in the Oxford environment, left me having to choose between either fully processing the losses I have felt and sleeping as much as I need to, or doing an essay adequately. In short, I am too tired (sertraline, again, by the way), and I think I deserve a break.
I am not the only one: 38% of students report becoming more mentally unwell since coming to Oxford, and our workload keeps Cherwell articles being churned out in one way or another – apologies for adding to that pile-up, by the way. But there is no escaping the fact: our workload is intense, especially when compared to other universities. Having closely observed another Russell Group university, Oxford students are indeed working themselves to death by comparison. At this particular university, it was unusual for students to have to write 2500-word essays (which I do every two weeks), and the absence of a tutorial system meant that students could go weeks without having to elucidate their thoughts on the topic at hand. Whereas I take 24 hours to write a good-ish, passable essay, students at other Russell Group universities can get what feels like free firsts for one burst of work in an all-nighter lasting 10 hours. Oxford is just so much more intense. We should pat ourselves on the back for getting on with such hard graft most of the time, and be proud that Oxford looked at us as spotty-faced 17 year olds and thought we’d be up to the task, but there is also a moment when it has to pause. When somebody dies. When the medication just isn’t working.
It has been noted to me several times by postgraduate students that they can tell who attended Oxford for undergraduate, because those who did not tend not to understand the sort of corner-cutting they can get away with. I, four years into the system, am all too aware of the sort of pisstake I can – and ought to be able to – get away with. Students learn how tutors work as much as the other way around: we figure out that certain tutors will not tolerate much flakiness, whilst others would bend over backwards to ensure that a student does not suffer too much.
This is simply not enough, though. The work is still there, as is the guilt, and putting work off simply makes it accumulate down the line. We need a mid-term amnesty, a hiatus which most usually call a ‘reading week’.
I stand by my earlier comments, though: many students do not do any actual reading during a reading week, instead taking the time to booze up, shimmy down, and visit their loved ones. This University should be canny enough to recognise that its students would not read much either, barring a few nose-to-the-grindstone grifters too good to develop a mental illness like the rest of us. We would use the time to do the essentials of living we so rarely have time for, such as getting new glasses, reading books we actually like, going to student theatre, and maybe we would return to our disciplines fresh-faced and with a joie de vivre.
As such, I am hesitant to call this a ‘reading week’. It is a plain misnomer and false advertising. What I am actually calling for is a rest week, to allow us to actually enjoy being in Oxford, a city replete with good culture, company and food, installed in the middle of term. As I sit here, I have my dissertation and a Jane Austen essay eating away at my brains. Sure, it’s a good distraction from my personal woes, but Freud would (and, sure, I know what he’d tell me about being queer, fine, he was right now and again) inform us that repressing anything, distracting ourselves, does not end well. He would maybe see it ending in rustication, as it does for approximately 4% of students. These students are in the pits, too: cut adrift from college support, sometimes having to work, and not even free from the workload as some have to pass exams to be readmitted, according to Cherwell. Nobody wins.
We admit the best of the best to Oxford: students who genuinely have passion for their subjects, in a manner that probably raised a few eyebrows at sixth form. This passion can be cultivated well if we just let those with it breathe once in a while, and give themselves a chance to cry, mourn, laugh, eat, or [redacted], without feeling that they need to rush back to a half-done essay. Goddamn it, let us nap!
