SCABs

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. – By @JaneyLbarker

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. 

Now in an ideal Wonderland, I would have loved to have Lewis Carroll sat next to me during my first week at SCA. If he was there he would have simply explained to the mentors that this quote wasn’t just for a peculiar unpunctual white rabbit. No, no, this quote was meant for many people like me – a panic artist.  

I’ll be honest I found my first few days at SCA quite tough. Don’t get me wrong there were so many highlights (like meeting my lovely cohort and inspiring mentors and of course the legend, Marc oh and let’s not forget Porky the cat) but, I found the rush and pace of the classes very challenging. The idea that we were expected to think on our feet so quickly and then present back our thoughts/ words and ideas was a very daunting prospect for me.   

I’ll begin with our improv class. This was scary. Throwing yourself into an exercise where you’re pretending to be a (convincing) plank of wood is never going to be easy, but doing this in front of a room full of people you hardly know is going to be hard. Next up we have poetry. This was daunting too. Throwing yourself into a free writing exercise using just the term ‘future’ as a prompt is never going to be easy, but performing your 15-minute sloppy poem in front of the rest of the class is going to be hard. But, as you can see the common denominator here is: hard. This course is going to be hard and I think it will test everyone in every way at some point. 

After the showy improv and poetry classes were over I was feeling a tad… uneasy. But, then we had a mindfulness session and I loved every minute of it. Matt was brilliant and captured so many familiar feelings into vivid images. I mean who knew that the Amygdala was the fear centre tank commander of your life? Who knew what fear truly meant? I mean, I thought I was well acquainted with the term. But, Matt presented the word in an entirely new light, basically being… Fuck Everything And Run. At first, this sounded a little dramatic but I’ll admit when we were set the brief of making a GIF (something I had 0 experience with) and then presenting the GIF back to the class (my worst nightmare) I was contemplating the above. I was pacing around the studio like a frantic mess, I had absolutely entered the fear tunnel and nothing was getting me out. A few of my peers were kindly trying to explain some of the technicalities of Adobe to me but at this point, I was so nervous and not exactly present that even if I was asked to carry out a basic task, I just couldn’t. I felt the familiar feeling of sheer panic start to unfold and a new feeling of imposter syndrome start to kick in. I know it sounds ridiculous, being so stressed out over a GIF but it was the feeling that everyone around me was gracefully sailing through the task and I had no idea where to even begin. Thankfully, I eventually calmed down and just stepped back to ask for help. Ian came to the rescue and explained how to make the GIF so simply. Looking back at it now I’m embarrassed that I wasn’t able to do it without help. But, it just serves as a simple reminder to me that fear can be so immobilising and like Carroll said “the hurrier I go the behinder I get’. Thanks, Carroll – I’ll keep that noted.  

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