By Marianne Wathne Johansen

SCA essentials

SCA is a rollercoaster. For some it’s mostly fun, for some it’s terrifying, and for most of us it’s up, down and all around. We’re constantly being pushed to the edge, either by mentors, Marc or ourselves. During an interview day someone asked a great question – ‘How do you deal with the constant pressure to create things?’. Well, we’re taught a bunch of creative techniques and ways of thinking that no other ad school would teach you, but that’s not enough. As creative people, our minds are messy – at least mine is. If I were to describe mine in a word, it would be ‘tornado’. Anyway, I thought about this question, and I realised that we’ve actually been taught how to deal with these things. So if you wanna be better prepared for SCA than I was, listen up.

SCA is busy. Probably busier than the last days before your dissertation deadline, so managing time is a must. We had our first masterclass on time management during our first week, and I learnt a lot from it. The most important thing was that multitasking is impossible. You just switch from one task to another very quickly, and it drains your energy. To me, that explained a lot about me, my mum and my life in general. Seriously, look into it.

The other masterclass that moved me was also in the first week, from Ben. I’m not sure who called him Ben the Buddhist (it was probably Marc), but I found his religion irrelevant. He was talking to us about meditation and mindfulness, and he was way more interesting than any article on the subject. He gave us a great analogy, which I would like to share with everyone; Your brain is like a computer or smartphone. If you have too many apps open, the RAM gets filled up, and the device either becomes slow or freezes/turns off. It’s the same with brains and thoughts. If you think about things all the time, your mind gets filled up, and without ‘emptying the trash’, you may react worse than a smartphone does. In fact, he told us that the ‘animalistic’ brain takes over, making you more irrational. As a girlfriend and a creative partner, I can totally relate to this when things get stressful and ‘I don’t have time to meditate’. The latter is in fact an utterly ridiculous excuse, but we’ve all made it.

It’s extremely important to look after your health, especially when you’re in such a busy place. If I knew or cared about these things before I started, I would have done approximately 150% better in term 1. So please learn from my mistakes.