SCABs

Tonight I’d Like To Talk About… Lots Of Things (It’s Alright To Feel Shit) @UntiedEye

By  Steve Favell 

 

I have never experienced exponential growth in person before. This may be a slight oversight as technology surrounds us, but noticing it on a micro scale through the facets of the course at SCA has been fascinating.

 

Marc, the freaky genius (must have done this before…) has clearly designed the course in a way that speeds up exponentially, dragging the learning along with it. PB1, the brief I find myself almost two-thirds of the way through, is a three-week brief and man, this last fought night has been a steep learning curve.

 

In one respect the brief feels wide open and then at the same time feels very restrictive, and for good reason – wow has this brief tested me! This multi-faceted brief had me and my partner feeling like we’d cracked it precisely 48 times before, through coaching from in-house and visiting mentors (as well as on our own – I don’t know really whether it was hearing multiple informed opinions or our own ingenious…) we realised that simplifying is the solution and that interest can lie in the most mundane. There are also added elements to this brief that means we are selling a hobby as well as a brand and the best way to do that is to just go with a past time that is associated with a brand (it all sounds so simple now – oh how I’ve grown…).

 

Our first route involved taking a product that solved a problem and a hobby that added to that problem and then making a giant creative leap, connected the two; I give you, scrapbooking, and sell you plasters for all the paper cuts… no wonder this avenue ended up tripping us up (as well as providing a few laughs – free running for kids and selling BUPA children’s life insurance), anyway I digress.

 

PB2 is a two weeker and I can already feel my intuition growing, and my crosshairs focusing on a proposal much more rapidly than for PB1 and don’t worry Marc, I already foresee a one week brief for PB3.

 

As you can imagine I have really felt the pressure this week, and although I am under no illusion of being a unique snowflake like everyone else am experiencing the highs and lows of the process.

 

Today I made the mistake of interrupting my partner in a conversation. I wanted to crack on but shouldn’t have intervened, I said some stupid shit, wanting to vent about how I felt through a situation that had just occurred and was dressed down by a third party telling me to stop being so negative, and that I’d been negative all morning.

 

I think that anyone who knows me at all knows that I am generally not a negative person and at that time was perhaps struggling a little and this statement was unfortunately not helpful at all.

 

Having come through an extended period of psychosis, I dip in and out of wild highs and shitty lows, I’m sure that it’s not much more than most people and can only be grateful that the manic periods far out way the lows, but this experience reminded me how important it is to empathise rather than project, even though it may be wrapped up in a smile. I did not need to hear that at that point, in the same respect I would always shy away from telling someone who looked unhappy to, “smile”. It can only drive the person into a deeper spiral.

 

In this pressure cooker, this took me a little while longer than it should to shake but thanks to the patience of my partner I feel like we got right back on track.

 

Much like how you feel, or how other people feel about you being completely out of your control, there are points of this course where I feel like I am sprinting to keep up, but there is light at the end of the tunnel and everything is a learning.

Related SCABs

Go back

Student Application

  • Fill out the Application Form below to be a part of our next Award-Winning intake.

  • MM slash DD slash YYYY
image