By Munraj Chawla

202-… Something Vision

I started this SCAB with the intention to write about next year. With NYE a few days away, I’d thought it would be right that I write a SCAB about what I’m looking forward to and what I’m hoping to achieve in 2020. But, after reading Chloë’s SCAB,

(You can read it here: https://www.schoolcommunicationarts.com/10-times-around-the-sun-by-chlo_gray),

I realised that it hadn’t actually hit me that this would be the end of a decade. At the beginning of 2010 I was at high school and I’m pretty sure I wanted to be a doctor (Scrubs is still my all-time favourite sitcom so that would explain where that dream came from). That career path ended when I realised I can write history essays a lot better than I can remember the difference between mitochondria and chloroplast. There are very few times in your life where you can recognise a ‘turning point,’ but having reflected on what my life was like in 2010, I can definitely recall the moment where my life could have gone very differently. 

Before 2010, in high school I definitely hung out with people that weren’t helping me to achieve success. Or at least, that’s how my teachers put it when I was internally excluded, brought home by the police (don’t worry, no official warning although my parents loved that…) and I was forced to change classes. In 2010, I was in a whole new class, surrounded by a bunch of people I didn’t know but by the end of the year I would have made friendships that have since passed Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst’s 7-Year Expiration Date. Ten years ago, I was angry that my circumstances were changing and outside of my control, yet now I am grateful that somebody saw potential in me and effectively rescued my future. 

So, what if 2020 is a turning point too? 2019 surely had moments where things could have gone very differently for me. Getting the scholarship to SCA, my dad surviving his operation… Even in the last few months, I feel I’ve already made friends at SCA that I can see breezing past Mollenhorst’s cut off point, and my career is definitely on a road that 10 years ago would have seemed ridiculous to consider venturing upon. Come Portfolio Day and the placements that follow, I may be working in a completely different city or even country. I will also have won or have failed to win a D&AD New Blood Pencil and that will have an effect on what comes next too. 2020 has a lot of potential to lead my life in a whole new direction. 

As far as New Year resolutions go, once we exclude the usual “hit the gym, learn a language” stuff, my biggest desire for 2020 and I guess for the next decade is that I continue to work as hard as I have been and that it leads to success. Which, if I trust in Marc’s process as he tells us to, is likely. 

In 2020, I also turn 25. So, be sure to look out for my SCAB about the crisis I’ll be having then. 

Song of the SCAB: Kano – Teardrops https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H4QryGD2CM