By Joe Sare

FOR FOX SAKE- Lessons learnt from my scholarship application.

You’re sitting in a dark room. There is one, solitary blue light
casting spiked shadows across the post it-noted walls. The smell of old
coffee sits thick, and a mixture of cigarette ash and toast crumbs
scatter across the desk like atomic fallout. It’s Friday night. You can
hear the party downstairs, the singing, the coughs, the giggles. But
you’re alone. Its 2am. You’re squinting eyes are darting through
premier pro tutorials and you wonder; ‘how the fuck did I end up
working all hours of the day to edit footage of kids kicking a fox
fur.’

That was my life for weeks. On reflection, I learnt a lot about
myself. So here are a few lessons learnt.

When I people ask me if I’m competitive, I’m resistant to say yes.I
don’t want to win everything, but when I pick a battle, I take it up
to 11. This scholarship was one of those battles. I slept little, I
missed some great events, and I ignored a lot of people who actually
matter to me. Of course I don’t regret my decisions (I mean, I won.
Hell yeah), but I do need to requite myself. That’s not to say I
didn’t love working on a project so intensely, but there are more
productive ways to work than just pushing for the 19 hour rule. It’s
all well and good wanting to accomplish something, but I need to
manage my time better. So, lesson number 1 for myself; sort out your
lack of time management before you turn into a social reject vampire.

Not only do I need to organise my time, but I need to spend less of it
directly on the project. I’m reminded of a scene in the Inbetweeners
where Will has been studying so long he begins to question if what
he’s reading are really words: ‘is this a word?… it doesn’t look
like a word’. There were points where I was buried so heavily into my
project that I had no idea if what I was doing was completely
nonsensical or not. And only once you’ve been dragged out to look at
the bigger picture, does the little problem you’ve spent 6 hours on
become blatantly obvious. Lesson 2; take a step back, and explain your
ideas to others.

I also realised I need a change of scenery before the start of term. I
did most of my scholarship application in my flat in Hackney Wick, and
as fun as that was, sitting in this flat is not going to bloom any
more ideas. The days where I went out to work and met people were
often the most productive. As Nicholas said in his first SCAB,
creative stimulation is not bred out of a strict schedule or
repetition. To be honest, I have no idea where it comes from, but I
can be sure to say it doesn’t come from this same cold, grey London.
So, if taking a holiday to reset my mental batteries is the answer,
sign me up. Lesson three; change your schedule regularly or you’ll
lose interest.

After re-reading this, it appears most of my lessons revolve around
time. It’s not something we have a lot of at SCA, so I guess my task
for the remainder of the summer is to do a bit of mental calendar
organisation and management skills to work out how best to spend it.

I hope I’m not too late to start.

(As a side note, If any other newbies wanna link up, drop us an email
on joeysare@gmail.com, would be cool to meet a few of you and see
where we’re all at before we start. I’ll be back in London
mid-August.)