Last week I had my tutor feedback on my last assignment, my tutor is lovely and her job is to bring my attention to strengths and weaknesses I have. Even when pulling me up on something it is done in an incredibly positive way. I honestly feel I’ve learned from her feedback and feel very encouraged in general.

Every feedback session encourages me to be more experimental and play about more. I’m making baby steps with that but it’s not enough. She can see I’m experimenting more but I’m still in my comfort zone. It’s mostly a time management problem. I’ve left things too late to start and then have to rush to a deadline. I make the minimum amount of samples and run out of time when things start to get interesting. It’s playing around A LOT that creates the more challenging and interesting ideas. Time. Lots of time is needed and I don’t have it.

This leads to a whole lot of “things I lack…” conversations. All I see online is middle class people with plenty of time/money/support from a partner/spare rooms facing out into the beautiful countryside posting about their degree journeys. Sometimes I get a bit envious. I don’t have those things. I’m having to scramble around the house to find “exciting” materials because I can’t keep buying shit. And this is just level one, module one. I’m sure there are other people in the same boat as me but it’s just frustrating sometimes.

However, in the spirit of turning your weaknesses into strengths, I plod on. You just have to be more creative with what you have in your recycling bin and trawl round the charity shops more! Books are the easiest problem to solve. I renewed my library card. All the cuts over the years have turned my library into a shadow of it’s former self. Arts and crafts have been reduced from seven or eight bookcases down to one. Fiction has been halved and half of that is crime novels. The only section not significantly reduced is the children’s books. That is a huge blessing. Still the staff are amazing and you can use several libraries – including Nottingham City Library, if it ever gets finished! You can also order in any books you need. So still an amazing resource. I also read that I could use some University libraries with my student ID but I’ve not checked that out yet.

So, I may not have a garage full of potential materials or a room that looks out onto hills or the sea but I do still have the luxury of giving it a go. Maybe someone looks at my blog or Instagram and thinks how lucky I am. A lot of people are worse off than me.

Lainey x