By Dennis Engel

Scholarship or B.A. (Bachelor of Arts)?

I think this was one of my most important and life changing questions I asked myself in the last several years. During the start of the scholarship competition I was working full-time as a graphic designer for a big magazine in Cologne, Germany. Beside my job I worked hard on my bachelor project of the Maastricht Academy of Design  and Technology to finish my studies in graphic design.  First I tried a couple of days to handle my B.A. and scholarship competition simultaneously next to my job. But I realized pretty fast that I needed to decide to concentrate on one project or the other. So I decided to concentrate on my future goal and procrastinated my bachelor project to work on the scholarship competition. If I would have known that the competition is going to be so hard this year and that the standard of the projects would be so high, I think I would have decided differently. 

So during my “summer vacation” while everybody posted cocktail shots, surfing vines and one-nightstand instagram pics, I moved back to my parents place into a small village in Germany and surrounded my self with cows, Jägermeister and fresh country air to try hard to finish my bachelor project while constantly thinking about London and the SCA. 

In beginning  of August after a 5 week coffee addiction and endless self-motivation and stay focused youtube videos, I finally had my end presentation!  I knew that I simply needed to run the last 100m of a whole marathon and that the end was near to start a new episode in live. So I presented my project and my teachers absolutely hated my idea. They completely destroyed my 6 weeks of work in less than 5 minutes and I thought that’s it! So when I figured out that I had nothing to loose I told my teacher that I got accepted at the SCA and that I would move to London even without a bachelor degree. Suddenly the wheel turned around and the teachers started to become noisy about the school, the course and how I got the placement.  I couldn’t believe what was happening. I suddenly found myself presenting my 4 min self presentation for the SCA during my bachelor end presentation and my teachers loved it. After we kept on discussing my future plans and the concept of what the SCA is about, I finally got the lucky news that my future way to SCA would be a big reason and a pragmatic decision why I passed my bachelor exam. Chapeau SCA! 

@dennis_engel87