By Lucy Pennock

 

Hi, I’m the 2:1 girl

Book inspections. 

Where to start?

I’m not stupid but I’m also not the brightest cookie in the class. 

I work hard. I try. 

But I also like to chill out. Relax. 

Watch Netflix. Normal stuff. 

Recently, it feels like no matter how hard I work it’s never enough. Or good enough. 

My back and neck hurt. 

Probably due to the hours spent hunching over a laptop screen fiddling away on Photoshop and Illustrator this past week. Laying out the work. Refining. Editing. Rewriting. 

Fighting my perfectionism. 

Even though I feel like I’m working super hard, I slack. 

Not the messenger app. No, no. The original use of the word. 

I’ll happily cut corners, sift through Spotify and end up in a Taylor Swift Reddit hole.

The thing is I don’t need to work longer or harder. That’s stupid. 

I need to work less. I need to work smart. 

It’s weird but when I don’t try I always seem to end up doing better. 

It’s always been the case. 

At uni, my best essay was one I wrote the night before. Scrambling together references I’m 100% sure I pretty much made up. 

I’m sick of being the 2:1 girl. 

I always got 60s. Never 70s or 80s or even 90s. 

It seems like the harder I try, the more I fuck it up. 

But the thing is it’s just not in my nature to not work myself to the bone. 

I care lots. Maybe too much. 

The thing is about advertising it’s all bullshit anyway. 

There’s no right answer or right way of doing things. Not really! 

And as Rory Sutherland said in his talk – it’s alchemy. Magic!

But the industry is losing its spark. And I guess it’s our job as young bright creatives to bring back the magic. 

And magic is effortless right!? It shouldn’t be a bore. Practice makes perfect of course. But it should come naturally.  

Now that I’m at SCA – the hippy liberal art school I never got to go to, I want a first. I want to get into Cream. 

Annihilate everyone else and bag the best motherfucking job out there. 

Why? Because I really love what I do. And also because for once in my life I’ve found something I’m actually alright at. 

But I don’t want to be alright. I want to be brilliant. 

I want a first.

So that’s why I’m going to work less, work smarter. 

Because reverse psychology may just be the trick.

Even though Lauren and I didn’t drastically improve our score from the last book crit, I do feel like deep down we’ve come on leaps and baby bounds. 

The work ethic is there. We both work hard.

But I think I personally need to try less! 

Then maybe it will click.