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A quick note on where I'm writing from: I did my own degrees at universities in Pakistan before returning to university classrooms as a lecturer and researcher. So this isn't an outside account of a system I've only observed. I sat where my students sit, made the same swap myself more than once, and only later, from the other side of the classroom, started asking why.

I've spent most of my teaching life moving between two kinds of classrooms in Pakistan, a public university and a private one, and social sciences students in both places run into the same wall eventually. It usually happens during research methods, when they're writing their first real paper and have to build a reference list.

Note: I suggest you, as the reader, play John Williams’s version of Carol of the Bells on repeat while reading this.

It's 25th December, and I’m sitting with family, watching A Christmas Carol. Euphemisms of torture take many forms. Watching this is among them. What does being triggered mean? Does not wanting to watch count? It's not as if I’m required to read Anders Breivik’s manifesto, or some royal speak about what they do this time of the year. I realise there’s a great privilege for me. If at Christmas, this is my annoyance, then I am fortunate. I’m not out in the cold or in searing heat, alone, with no food and no clothing to shield me from the elements.