By Carly Illston

“I’m So Tired” – The Beatles 

It’s day 16. The biscuit jar is empty. Energy levels are rapidly depleting. People are walking around as shells as their former selves. There’s no sign of intelligent life anywhere. 

I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I am exhausted. Sleepy. Fatigued. Drained. Pooped. Cream crackered. Wiped. Zonked. I’ve hit the wall. And have also run of out of synonyms for the word “tired”. 

I almost can’t remember what it feels like to not be tired. It’s kinda like when you have a cold and your nose gets blocked and you can’t remember what it ever felt like to be able to breathe properly, except instead of a blocked nose it’s me feeling tired and instead of being able to breathe it’s me not feeling tired. Get it? 

Marc did warn us he was going to break us down and build us from the ground up. “Like training the Navy Seals” he had said. I had laughed at the time but let me tell you that stopped very swiftly. I would say this is rock bottom but have very quickly learnt not to underestimate the power of Marc. I feel like in response to this he would say something clever along the lines of “If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing.” 

But nevertheless, four active brief calls for trash tv in the evenings. I completely agree with Alice’s observation that our brains are really overstimulated right now, and my personal solution to this is a nice bit of mindless reality tv. I know Marc said we can’t live on McDonalds and Love Island, but at this point, I don’t think my brain would be capable of handling anything other than Gogglebox. Sorry educational documentaries, you lose this round again. 

And as if four active briefs wasn’t enough, we have been placed in completely different groups for each one. It’s like conducting traffic on a 4 lane intersection, or trying to jump on and off of a fast moving fairground ride that will decapitate you if you fall. I guess what I’m trying to say is it is absolute pandemonium. But that’s just life. If we were sitting in the same little groups working on one brief a month we would be in for a very rude awakening when we get out into the Real World. 

But the thing that has surprised me most about being this tired is that I’m not tired of the work. Not at all, in fact. I’m just tired of feeling tired. But I guess that is one of the reasons I wanted to come to SCA- to get used to the 9-5 work day routine, which is at the point very alien to me. I’m hoping my body will treat the next few weeks as a habit breaking period, and after 21 days, my body will get used to the long hours of creative work that I foresee in my future. But for now I’m just hoping I’ll make it through to the weekend. 

After all, what is life but an unstable fairground ride? Enjoy the ride, try to ignore the loose screw that just came out of your seatbelt, and avoid getting decapitated in the process.