Pressure pushing down on me / Pressing down on you, no man ask for / Under pressure that burns a building down / Splits a family in two / Puts people on streets. Almost forty years after they were written, this song's lyrics apply so well to all that has happened over the past two years under the pressure of a worldwide pandemic that it is almost spooky. Even the burning to the ground of a municipal health services (GGD) building in Urk at the beginning of 2021 was sung about by David and Freddie in a Nostradamus-like way. Go ahead and fill in the other predictions hidden in the lyrics above.

Chipping around, kick my brains around the floor / These are the days it never rains but it pours. This mood, feeling caged by the four walls of your student room or your home office in the attic, perhaps in quarantine; it certainly gets the grey matter churning uncomfortably. This will be a familiar experience to our students and employees as they look back over the past two years. The never-ending torrent of new measures and restrictions came to feel more and more like a permanent deluge.

Insanity laughs under pressure we're breaking / Can't we give ourselves one more chance? / Why can't we give love that one more chance? Ah yes, a great many students have reached that breaking point, or have gone past it multiple times. The findings of various studies among this group make worrying reading. Study pressure was a growing problem even as the pandemic started and corona only bumped up the pressure. Loneliness, falling behind, delays to courses, though bad enough in themselves, these are only the tip of the iceberg. But we have to push on and if the measures continue to ease up or even disappear, the future will come back into view in full-color and missed chances will return. Does love play a part in all this? A very important one, I think, and being more understanding towards each other comes a close second.

A seemingly simple song often carries more meaning than you'd expect at first glance, don't you agree? Of course, it does help if the wish (full lecture theaters, get-togethers in your association's haunt, enjoying a coffee with a group of colleagues, only using Teams every now and then, having the campus buzzing again with lectures and performances) is the father to those thoughts. But who can help me, what in heaven's name does this mean: ‘Um boom ba bay’?