By Josie Finlay

SEX!

And now I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about the Russian land reforms of 1861. Haha, joking. S-E-X has been a real hot and steamy topic around SCA lately. What’s that statistic, that men think about sex every seven seconds or something? I used to think that sounded exhausting. But at SCA, you can barely move for people thinking, talking, scamping, pitching, shouting, pushing and crafting about sex.

I remember studying a novel in year 9 that involved a lot of simmering sexual overtones, but being year 9s, all of us were too embarrassed to mention the S word. This was a bit of an issue since all literature is really all about sex. (Or anyway, if you’re studying any piece of literature, you can write the word ‘sex’ in any margin and circle it, and no one will ever question it.) Anyway, to help get rid of our embarrassment, our English teacher, Mrs Brown, made our whole class stand on our desks and shout ‘SEX!’ I’ve never forgotten it.

This was good preparation for going into advertising. Being embarrassed really wouldn’t work around here. For D&AD, lots of teams are working on the sex brief (Durex) or the menstruation brief (McKinsey). Earlier in the week we discussed each other’s ideas as a whole class. It had all the ingredients of an extra horny teenage sleepover, but with 50 people – none of whom are teens – and a Google Slides presentation. Over pizza and snacks, we chewed over period sex, custom fetish videos, hentai porn, role play, and dirty talk. Then we all had sex.

No, we didn’t, soz. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the whole of Hush became completely celibate after D&AD. Spending weeks agonising over ideas about sex with dozens of classmates and mentors while eating reheated pasta from a Tupperware? For me, that would rank pretty highly in a list of bedroom buzzkills.

Actually, when it comes to embarrassment, talking openly about sex is the least of our worries at SCA. I’d guess that most people in the world would prefer to discuss their bedroom activities than:

• Do a cool/hilarious/interesting/clever/thought-provoking/tear-jerking four-minute presentation about something that shows who you are as a person, like we all had to do for our application day
• Talk openly about cringey first ideas/show nonsensical first scamps to your partner, let alone mentors, let alone visiting mentors
• Go for a book crit with your first attempt at a portfolio
• Pitch your made-up ideas every week to 50 people and have them rated and slated live
• Kitchen duty, lol

Looking at that list, I realise that we’ve really had to become quite resilient in the past few months. Yeah, it’s just advertising – it’s not that tough in the grand scheme of things. But in terms of overcoming embarrassment and awkwardness, we’ve come quite far, I think. Now, the thought of standing on my desk and shouting ‘SEX’ seems like an absolute piece of cake. Mrs Brown would be so proud.

The copy scores 65.4 in the Flesch Reading Ease test