By Becky Brice

Things I learnt at Uni and beyond

• You can’t please everyone, especially every tutor. I would endlessly try and sculpt my work to please them, and seeing as there were multiple tutors, I got various conflicting opinions. My work ended up feeling lost. Although the advice from tutors is always useful to take on board, I need to remember this time that this is my work with my name on it. I might eventually have to back myself and explain why I did something a certain way and at that point I can’t say ‘because Marc said I should’.
• Do more than what is expected. I often did the bare minimum either because I didn’t have time to go the extra mile or my heart really wasn’t in it. I want to keep this is mind and factor in extra time from the beginning to go further than a brief / mentor/ partner has asked.
• Try not to compare. I don’t know that I’ll every be able to switch off the part of my brain that looks at other people’s work and back at mine, wondering where I went wrong but I really want to try. In my experience it sends me into a spiral of ‘why bother!?’. I also must not compare my process. What works for one person will not always work for you Becky, so stop trying to make it fit and get on with doing it your way.
• Use every hour. I’m sure I could have made much better progress on certain projects if I had used the allotted time more efficiently and pushed that little bit harder on the run up to deadline. Since leaving uni I’ve taken on various jobs that have called for me to work outside of my full time job. I managed to utilise my time on trains commuting to get that extra couple of hours work done day.
• Looking like an idiot is not the worst thing that can happen to you. This one is a real struggle. This is supposed to be a list of things I’ve learnt, which I think this point fits into. However it’s also supposed to be a list of things I have put into practice, internalised and are now part of my being. This is where this lesson falls short. I know saying something stupid in front of a bunch of people is a fleeting moment of misery and it’ll all be over and forgotten shortly, soon to be replaced by some other idiot’s comment. I know this, but it doesn’t stop me using my fear of looking idiotic as an excuse not to speak up. This one is an ongoing lesson I think.
• I’m going to make mistakes, and the sooner I accept this the better. As much as I tried to plan my way through things at uni I still ended up making so many mistakes with a whole list of things I would do differently if I have a second go at it. This is inevitable, so learning not to beat myself up is a useful skill to possess.

I wonder how much longer this list will be by the end of 2018? And how many of the above I will think are utter shit.