By Sophie Becker

PICK YOUR SCABS

I am notoriously bad at choosing what to write about when it comes to SCABs. That’s only reason I’ve ever been late with them—because I just can’t choose. I promise.

I reckon there are few terrified new SCA recruits (or potential recruits) reading these SCABs now, worrying and fretting about writing their first one. What ever will you pick for your first SCAB topic? And your second, your third, your fourth? It never ends.

The good news is that it does get easier. Mainly because you lose your filter and start to care less about what people think. Your classmates will also probably stop reading them so much so the pressure won’t be as intense.

Those mandatory first three matter enormously, and also not at all. While you’ll probably define each one of your classmates by their SCABs before you start school, as soon as that first day hits you’ll forget about all of it. (Although I still refer to Joe Ribton in my head as ‘the female friend’ so there you go.)

So if anyone is agonising over what SCAB topic to pick, here are some suggestions:

1. Your most embarrassing story told in intimate detail
2. A review or overview of an exhibition or event you went to recently
3. Your first impressions of Marc Lewis
4. A rant about your crippling imposter syndrome
5. A short fictional story with no relevance to anything at all
6. What you learnt from a masterclass that week
7. What’s keeping you up at night
8. A weird little hobby you’ve started recently
9. Reflect on how you’ve developed over the course of SCA
10. Mistakes you’ve made and how you’re learning from them
11. Bizarre behaviours SCA is forcing you to adopt
12. A little ode to someone in the class you admire
13. A response to someone else’s SCAB
14. All the things you’re grateful for in your life
15. Challenging some of the weird (and wonderful) things Marc’s said
16. Announce your secret love for a fellow classmate
17. What you’ve learnt from the partner you worked with that week
18. Intensely overshare the details of your emotional highs and lows
19. Pledge to begin a new habit to replace an old, destructive one
20. Go through the class and list out something about each of them (i.e. signature item of clothing, snack ratings etc)
21. Address your doubts about being a creative
22. Get your Mum / Dad / dog to write one about you
23. A day in the life of Squirrel
24. Talk about your very early life experiences and why they’ve made you the strange human you are today
25. List out of all your inadequacies and why they make you a better person
26. Research and write about a new concept or way of thinking
27. Why the school system failed you
28. Why you love academia 
29. Tell the story of the little instances in your life that led you to SCA
30. Talk about your favourite advertising and analyse what makes you so excited about it
31. Create an alter ego and write about SCA life from their perspective
32. How you’d do things differently if you could start over again
33. An abstract poem
34. Talk about your opinion on something topical going on in the world
35. Unleash all the weird demonic thoughts you’ve never shared with anyone
36. Make a video blog 
37. An illustration
38. Write and record a song
39. Make a podcast
40. Write a SCAB about SCABs 

So there you go. 40 ideas to get you thinking about what to write your first SCAB on.

So yeah, just get on with it and pick your SCABs.