There’s a building at Andover where students go when their bodies give out: Sykes. Yet you don’t go there to get better—you go there to disappear. Not permanently. Just long enough to slip out of sight, rest under fluorescent lights, and return to class without disturbing the flow of the academic week. For a place called the Wellness Center, it does remarkably little to make students well. It can hold you, but it cannot heal you.
This was the case last weekend, when I, with aching limbs, a sore throat, dizziness, and fatigue, went to Sykes in search of genuine help. Yet, instead of the medical attention I expected, all I received was closer to temporary confinement. They checked my vitals, asked a few questions, noted that I didn’t have the flu, and offered me saltines and a bed. There was no treatment plan, no doctors in sight, and no conversation about what came next. I stayed the night. The next day, upon my discharge from the facility, nothing had changed. Still sick and exhausted, I went back. They welcomed me again—politely, professionally—but with the same limitations. In that place, my sickness was not solved but only isolated from the busy traffic of the world outside.
Eventually, I was excused from classes—granted an official reprieve from the obligations of the day. It spared me the harsh red “Unexcused Absence” of absence on BlueLink, but nothing more. Class assignments kept piling up, my classmates kept living their lives, and tests still loomed in the future. And when I returned to my room, it wasn’t to rest—it was to catch up. I was excused from class, yes, but not from the consequences of my absence. At Andover, there is a hard distinction between being told to rest and being given the conditions to actually recover. One is performative. The other requires structural change.
The problem isn’t within the people. The nurses at Sykes are kind, attentive, and patient. But they operate within a system that has no real infrastructure for recovery. Sykes cannot delay your exams, nor can it reschedule your deadlines or even negotiate with your teachers to minimize the impact on your GPA. It cannot even guarantee you another day to rest if your vitals don’t quite hit the institutional threshold of “too sick to function.” What it can do is offer you a warm blanket and a temporary bed—and then return you to the same cycle you were too sick to function in in the first place.
What makes this dynamic so difficult to confront is that it doesn’t look like neglect. It presents as care—gentle voices, warm meals, rest. But without the power to interrupt academic demands, that care remains symbolic. If wellness were truly treated as a priority, Sykes would be equipped not only to excuse students from class but also to initiate a short-term academic hold. This would allow for a 48 to 72 hour pause on major assignments and assessments, similar to the accommodations athletes receive after a concussion. This is not about leniency. It would involve documentation, a centralized approval process, and a limited number of uses each term. These measures would prevent students from exploiting the system while protecting those who are genuinely unwell. Right now, students may be offered comfort, but the academic machinery continues without pause. And the message remains unchanged: take your day off, then catch up quietly.
Sp students keep going. We take tests with headaches. We write through fatigue. We show up not because we feel ready, but because we know that resting too long puts our grades at risk. It’s true that students can return to Sykes if symptoms continue. But in practice, extended time at Sykes does not come with academic protection. In my case, I was still expected to complete the same assignments, on the same deadlines, with no additional guidance or delay. My performance suffered. I was left with a compromised version of both my work and my understanding. Over time, this becomes the norm. Students begin to accept that being sick means falling behind, and that recovery is something to figure out quietly, alone.
We need care in practice. That starts with giving Sykes institutional power. Imagine a system where, upon admission, a nurse can initiate an academic wellness hold—a 48 to 72-hour pause on assignments, exams, and participation, automatically communicated to teachers. No scrambling for extensions, no shame in asking, and certainly not begging for extensions on major exams that seem too far to hold onto. Just a structured stop, built into the system, the same way we accommodate concussions or physical injuries in sports. Academic departments should be required to honor these holds, coordinated through a central liaison, so no student has to negotiate while sick. If we claim to care about wellness, this must be the baseline. Until then, Andover will continue to hold its sick students only in the appearance of compassion. But holding is not healing. We deserve both support and comfort in the spaces where we go to fall apart.
