Why Deadlines Aren’t Daunting

Deadlines. A stress-inducing word that seems to be popping up everywhere this time of year, whether it be finishing assignments for school, completing tasks at work, or submitting to the RiPPLE anthology (this last deadline is one that everyone should be thinking about because it’s coming up quick!). A scary word that no one wants to think of. Or is it? Instead of agonizing over why deadlines are the worst thing in the world, let’s explore why deadlines might actually be the best when it comes to getting work done.

For me, the biggest benefit of having a deadline is that it forces me to accomplish something. The piece of writing that comes out at the end might not be a masterpiece (it definitely is nowhere near to being a masterpiece) but at least something exists. As someone prone to procrastination, I need the pressure of a deadline in order to write.

Now, this may seem counterintuitive. Won’t the pressure create writer’s block? There was one time this semester when I had to submit a piece of writing to my writers’ workshop group. It was the first submission of the semester, and I had volunteered to submit even though I didn’t have anything written. As a sat in a café, staring at the blinking cursor in my blank Word document, I began to wonder why I had volunteered. Surely it would have been nice to have more time. But looking back, I realize that having more time wouldn’t have made a difference. Because I was under pressure to write, I had to focus and go with the idea I had, even though I was unsure.

The next time I had to submit was a completely opposite experience. I had a piece written and was ready to turn it in weeks before the deadline. I was trying out not procrastinating on projects.

The time after that, I was back to being completely unsure of what to write. I had multiple ideas flowing through my mind, but none seemed right. The only reason I finally settled on one was because I had a deadline. And that is the point I want to make through these examples. No matter the situation I was in, a deadline was the constant motivation in finishing my work.

And that, perhaps, is the best feature of a deadline. As I’ve learned from my writers’ workshop, a piece of writing is never really done. There could always be more edits. A piece can be good, brilliant, spectacular even and still benefit from improvements (no matter how big or small).

What stops me from forever working on a piece is a deadline. Deadlines might seem hindering (though I’ve actually found that when writing, inspiration comes when it wants to, whether I’m feeling under pressure or completely calm) but at the end of the day, they are the only thing that can make me produce a piece of writing.

So, go forth creative types and harness the power of the deadline as a motivation instead of shying away, for after all, deadlines aren’t that scary.

By Amanda Zazueta

The Story Behind the Theme

The RiPPLE team can’t wait to see what Kingston students do with this year’s theme of changing rooms, an exploration of the literal and figurative transformations of space and the people within those spaces. The theme came from our partnership with The Community Brain, a CIC dedicated to local projects to improve the borough of Kingston.

To give everyone more insight into how this theme came about, we’re going to take a look at the King George’s Playing Fields in Tolworth, the focus of The Community Brain’s next project. The fields are home to Corinthian-Casuals, the highest ranked amateur football club in England. The Corinthians and the Casuals were founded in 1882 and ’83 respectively, before merging in 1939. A Corinthians tour to Brazil in 1910 even sparked the creation of the Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, which is now one of South America’s most successful football clubs.

This should be a thing of pride for Tolworth, but unfortunately, the pavilion that once held the club’s changing rooms has fallen into disrepair. The Community Brain plans to start renovations next year, and the director, Robin Hutchinson, wants to take this opportunity to create a space that reflects, in addition to the impressive sports culture in Tolworth, the wider community of Kingston.

“Kingston has a history of dirty fingernails,” says Robin, speaking to me in the Rose Theatre Kingston. “It designs things, it makes things, it’s innovative.”

Robin has dedicated his career to the building of spaces or “playgrounds” to allow people to express creativity within their community. In reimagining the pavilion, he hopes to celebrate the ingenuity of everyday Kingston residents. He pictures the pavilion as a community centre with not only changing rooms, but a cafe giving job experience to people with learning disabilities and, since it’s on the edge of the greenbelt, a place to learn about and celebrate nature.

But people are more invested in their community when they participate in making it better, and so The Community Brain plans to perform a feasibility study next year to make sure their renovations fit the needs of Tolworth.

Robin believes in the power of allowing others to apply their own creativity to projects, rather than dictating their thoughts and actions. It produces results he could never have imagined, and he hopes that in considering the theme of changing rooms, students will also create something beautiful, communal, something to be proud of. He envisions RiPPLE as “a bible of change...Where you can pick it up, flip through it, and something will resonate with you and make you go, ‘Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? I can do that’, or ‘I’ve been there’.”

And as students, in new rooms, a new city, perhaps a new country, trying to find our places, this topic is especially poignant to us.

“RiPPLE is the most brilliant word for this project,” says Robin. “Maybe this tiny book, this tiny stone in the water, might go way beyond…change me, change the way I think about things, create a playground of the mind, allow people to go, ‘That’s where I want to live’.”

By Gabriella Buckner

Changing Rooms: What does it mean to you?

As you likely already know, Kingston University’s annual creative anthology, RiPPLE, is once again open for submissions. But this year we’re doing things a little differently. One of the key differences is that the entire anthology will be subject to this overarching theme:

Changing Rooms.

This theme was conceived in collaboration with Robin Hutchinson. Robin is the director of The Community Brain, a local, community organization with whom RiPPLE is extremely excited to be partnering this year. The theme speaks to The Community Brain’s initiative (one of many!) to reimagine the changing rooms at the historic King George’s Playing Fields in Tolworth. The goal of the initiative is to turn the rundown location into a community space and give the town something they can really feel proud of.

The idea of transforming and transformative spaces, I believe, is inherent in the phrase ‘changing rooms.’ Pushing the boundaries of what we can possibly imagine a space to be, as Robin is proposing with the facilities at King George’s, is a concept that resonates especially deeply with me.

If we can imagine the possibilities of a space, we can imagine the occurrences that may transpire there and the people those occurrences may include. Imagining the possibilities of a space is a gateway to imagining the possibilities of all the things around us and, further, the complex depth of the people around us. And if we can imagine the complexity of others, the possibilities of what we can create together are endless.

At its heart, this is what changing rooms means to me: Imagining the possibility of what can happen in between moving from one room to the next. It asks us to consider how each room we’ve walked through influences how we encounter the next room. And when we take everything we’ve held on to from our various rooms, and put them together with everything everyone else has held onto from their various rooms, what kind of magic can we create together?

It is in this spirit that I now invite you to create, and to bestow upon us the honour of sharing in that creation with you. What does changing rooms mean to you? The possibilities are endless.

Yours Sincerely,

Paige J Mader

Managing Editor,

RiPPLE Anthology, 2020

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Leave a comment to let us know how the theme changing rooms resonates with you, and don't forget to share your creative interpretation with us by SUBMITTING to the 2020 RiPPLE anthology!