Everyone told me it was going to be tough. The staff, the students, the website. The recurring message about the course more than anything was that they work you goddamn hard.

I’ll be real with you.

That terrified me.

Like proper existential panic terrified me.

(Ah)

I’ve wanted to go to SCA for the best part of two years. Everything about working in the ad industry excites me. Being creatively stimulated, the chance to speak to a massive audience, working on a wide variety of attractive and challenging briefs (etc etc this isn’t an open day).

But…

I’m also a lazy prick.

Up until this point in my life I have managed to waste away endless hours of productive working time, hiding behind the inevitable shot of adrenaline that hits just before a deadline to turbo charge me over the finish line.

Every time it happened it reinforced the idea that it works. It started at school with homework, I would wake up at 6am to complete a worksheet and 9 times out of 10 I wouldn’t fail.

I developed and refined the technique at university with my essays. Initially I wrote an essay in a week, then three days, then a couple days.

I got really good at panic writing.

I wrote 6000 words of my dissertation 28 hours before the deadline.

Ah.

This wasn’t sustainable.

So hearing about SCA and the legendary workload terrified me. I thought I would crumble at the first hurdle.

…

But

When I got here to *FUNNIEST* thing happened.

I started working. Hard.

There are a wide selection of clichés to pick from here. “Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is the first that comes to mind but yeah. Somehow, something inside of me clicked and motivating myself to do the work never became a challenge.

On the third day here, I sat down at my laptop and worked for four hours straight without even realising I’d skipped lunch. (I’m not trying to glamourise skipping meals but the change from fidgety, lazy me to this is crazy).

This weekend I voluntarily spent most of my Sunday collating the group SCAB and helping put together the image to accompany it.

Just a few hours ago I completed an assignment due tomorrow to about a 7/10 standard and instead of being content with it, scrapped the multiple hours of work and started all over again at 8pm just so I can produce something I’m proud of.

I don’t know what they’ve slipped into my coffee but for the time being I’m loving this newfound drive. Long may it last.