By Alice Burden

A day in the life of an SCA Student 

7.00: Lurch out of bed and straight into the shower. I have no time to waste so I wash, get dressed, make my lunch and leave. I don’t even dry my hair. 

7.40:  Leave the house, it’s pouring with rain so I leg it to the station. 

7.50: On the tube, which was OK today as I managed to get a seat about half way through. I listen to music and do my makeup (this is another way I’ve cut down my morning routine). 

8.30: Arrive at SCA. I generally try to get to school for 8.30, it gives me the right amount of time to wake up and hopefully get a little bit of work done. There are usually quite a lot of people there before me, some people get there around 7.45.

8.45: Make my breakfast and a coffee. This week I’ve been scrambling eggs in the microwave and I feel like I’ve hacked the system to be honest. This morning we are presenting facts about alcopops so my partner and I spend the time looking for something more interesting.

9.30: Town hall. Town Hall is ‘SCA speak’ for morning meeting. Usually we’re given a short talk from Marc about the day ahead or what we did the day before, sometimes we’re given a brief or we watch a film about advertising. You cannot miss a town hall. 

Marc decides that we are not presenting facts today, but instead gives us a masterclass about mental health. It’s really helpful as a few of us are struggling with our self-esteem since coming back after christmas. 

11.00: After a short break we have a masterclass from John Lowery, who teaches us about ‘Being our own planner’. It’s a really funny and interesting talk.

11.51: We have a break now. My partner, Phillip, and I speak to Pete, our strategy and copywriting mentor, about our current project and come to a much better angle for it. We’d been hoping to speak to a visiting mentor from The&Partnership but unfortunately he ran out of time, so we decide to go for a walk. We do a bit of SMP browsing in Sainsbury’s and can’t resist buying ourselves some treats. 

14.00: We’re given a ninety minute live brief from an agency about a soft drink. I work with a different partner for this as we are encouraged to ‘sleep around’ with different people before we settle in term 3. Ninety minute briefs are a really fun respite from the usual two week briefs we are working on. Ours doesn’t go that well as we spent a little too much time making the presentation and not enough writing a script.

16.50: The presentations are over and Phillip’s gone to play football with some of the lads in the class. I make my reflection slide for Friday. Every week Marc asks us to make an image which reflects on a topic he has chosen. This week it is about how he told us off last Friday for a presentation we gave to an agency which he felt was well below standard. He wants to know how we felt about it. I decide that it didn’t really phase me, or motivate me, so I create a slide depicting water off a duck’s back.

18.20: My partner gets back disgusting and sweaty from football. But work we must. 

20.00: We work solidly until 8 o’clock when we decide it’s time to call it a day. We still have so much to do but we also have to sleep. Until tomorrow when we do it all again.