five tips #5: believing in yourself

1) Be confident
The most important thing when studying a creative course is to be confident in your work. Believe in it. Push it. You have created something wonderful; nobody else. This is the one thing I struggled with up till about two months ago. I would always slightly compare my work to other people's and would end up hating it to the point I would convince myself I had failed and I should just give up.

2) Remember why you are here
My love of Photography began when I was just 14. My dad has always had an interest in it and he would sit with me for ages showing me all his camera bodies and lenses. He bought me my first DSLR just before we left for a family holiday and I didn't put it down for two weeks. From there, I decided I naturally wanted to study it and did a few months of it at sixth form alongside another three (horrible) subjects. After making the decision to drop out of sixth form, I began college and studied a BTEC Diploma in Photography for two years. Again, I didn't believe in myself and ended up finishing college and receiving a final grade of DD*D*. It was like that moment in Harry Potter when Neville Longbottom can't believe he's earnt 10 house points for standing up to his friends. Trust me to involve a bit of HP!

3) Ignore others
My attendance for my first year at Uni has been terrible. This was due to mixed emotions of wanting to leave, wanting to give up and not deal with the challenges ahead of me. With a creative course, it's not like sitting down to an exam. YOU have to think of the ideas and the concept, YOU have to plan everything and see it from beginning to end. Where do we find inspiration? How do we think of such artistic ideas? With our brains of course and you need time to do so. You cannot just think of an idea and begin an artistic approach out of no where. This is what people find hard to understand. No matter how much my family nagged at me not to leave Uni; it wasn't them having to quickly think of ideas. It was me.

4) Stop convincing yourself you're a failure
I collected my results this week and I actually did a lot better than I had anticipated. This is because I had worked my brain to mode overload and convinced myself I had failed. Well, I didn't. Just like last time. see this post here.

5) Keep your head up
I decided to stick it out and have just completed my first year at Uni. I have one more year to go which I know is going to be a lot more harder due to dissertations and work experience placements but I'm already thousands of pounds in debt and I've already completed a year so I just need to 'keep my head up and my heart strong' as dear ol' Ben Howard says and DO IT!

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XO love, Ashleigh x

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