By Charles Olafare

If You Only Listen To One Piece Of Advice About Sca, Make It This. 

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion this night be my last SCAB. It’s mad to think I’d make it this point, and I’m not sure I ever thought I would.

Yet here I am, doing okay despite having dropped the corner of a very heavy desk on my left toe and debating whether it’s okay to miss a crit to go to A&E. (It is okay.)

Anyway, I know that forthcoming students read these things, so I thought I’d drop some knowledge I wish people had told me before I started the course.

I was going to make a list of tips, but to be perfectly honest it really boils down to one thing: 

Get used to not being good. 

I’ll explain. SCA is a brilliant school, so it makes sense it would attract brilliant people. People like you reading this post now. Maybe you’re the sort of person who got amazing grades throughout school and university.

You might have even been the best in your class or gotten a first in an incredibly difficult academic subject at a notoriously exclusive academic institution. Failure could be something you’ve successfully managed to avoid your whole life. None of these things are bad. You should be proud of everything you’ve achieved up until this point. You should also come to accept that those times are over now. 

You’re going to fail at SCA. You’re going to fuck things up, get things wrong and completely misunderstand the fundamentals of advertising. On an almost daily basis. And that’s a good thing. 

You’ve got to get things wrong here in order to learn how to get them right. You must relish missing the mark, screwing things up and simply having someone tell you “that’s wrong, try again.” 

What you’re coming here to learn can’t be tested in an exam or revised for. There is no science to it. Success isn’t simply measured by how good your ideas are. And good ideas aren’t rarely borne out the kind of thinking that is rewarded in school or university.

It comes down to your ability to catastrophically fuck something up and still be able to go back to the drawing board with a smile on your face. Master this and the rest will naturally fall into place. 

And that’s it really. Turn up, do the work. Listen. Learn to accept that you’re wrong and that you often will be. And most of all, have fun and don’t take it all too seriously.