SCABs

SCAB The Interview – By @untiedeye

By Steve Favell

 

 

SCAB The Interview

 

I was once told by a past boss that you need two out of the following three things to succeed in life: talent, intellect, and time keeping.

 

I miss a train and I’m stuck getting a delayed train which will make me at least ten minutes late for ‘The Interview’. I pray that that my presentation is good enough to portray a little talent and intellect… and, that Marc and the other mentors have a similar attitude to success!

 

I arrive in Brixton with a big idea and an even bigger cool box (this thing looks like it has come straight out of a DeLorean from 1985 – apparently before anyone had had the brain wave of attaching wheels to any kind of luggage). We were told to prepare a four-minute presentation introducing ourselves in a unique way for the interview – a morning which will mainly be comprised of things you cannot prepare for (not in a scary way – more in a we want to test you and it’s a chance to shine way) and I feel my one preparation is good.

The seed of the idea came quite quickly but the presentation itself changed a lot. After spending a lot of time writing (to be honest) quite a dry presentation about myself with a few jokes (which are really hard to get across with any conviction when nervous) I changed direction completely after reading it aloud and all the way through for the first time. The four minutes went surprisingly quickly and I was trying to say too much without letting the idea have enough room to breathe – rushing it – making me more nervous in turn at the thought of running over. So, I changed it. I had a beautiful quote from Grayson Perry on identity, “It is accretion” and an idea that linked into that, and then I built a little chatter around them. I had thought carefully about the aesthetics of how to present my idea and designed the fuck out of any supplementary materials.

 

I am reminded of the size and weight of the cool box as I walk past the key operated lift of Saint Matthew’s Church and climb six flights of stairs, 80’s monstrosity in arm, back pack on and feeling the pressure of time weighing down on me as the heaviest load.

 

I arrive at SCA. The perfect entrance – late, sweaty and with a cool box, that alongside David Hasselhoff should have stayed firmly in the 80s! I’ll be honest it isn’t the first impression I’d hoped to make.

 

After conducting some more, some less traditional interview exercises we are assembled into ‘the pit’ to watch our presentations. The girl I’m interviewing with goes first and smashes it. I go second and feel grateful I had a last-minute turn around and scrapped my more rigid presentation structure. I am able talk a little on identity before bumbling around to set up the meat and bones of my presentation, wishing for a higher table and that I’d had a chance to do this before everyone had sat down. Against all odds it goes well and I have a feeling that has been building the last couple of years begin to be reinforced…

 

Trust your instincts.

 

As soon as I entered the SCA studio and got a sense of the people and the culture there I immediately felt this was an important place. I felt I could learn a lot here and that the culture that had been curated at SCA aligned with my way of doing things. I tried to manage my expectations as we were told we would have to wait until the following week to find out if we would be offered a place, although all that was running through my head was, this is what I want, had I done enough?

Related SCABs

Go back

Student Application

  • Fill out the Application Form below to be a part of our next Award-Winning intake.

  • MM slash DD slash YYYY
image