I swear it's from the eclipse the other night

I just want to caution that this post is LONG, so if you have somewhere to be, you might want to skip it.

Okay, so the portfolio thing. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I not spent the first 6 hours sweating profusely because I was THAT nervous to have my portfolio reviewed. I showed up about an hour early because it said registration started at 9am, and I thought I'd beat the crowd, which turned out to be about 9 people so thank god I rushed. I stood around awkwardly for a while and watched as all these people filed in and formed these little university cliques. It was just like high school. Awesome! I spied a bench across the room with only one girl on it and she looked nice enough so went over and sat down and turns out she was from Meramec. Okay, that's good! However, she turned out to be very strange, and from the moment I sat down, she proceeded to talk to me non-stop about whether a guy named Phil would show up. She spoke to me as though I knew this Phil character and it made me kind of creeped out. I'm sure she was nice but she also seemed a little home-schooled, if you know what I mean so it was really uncomfortable. Well, a girl came in that she knew from Meramec, who also happened to have been in my graphic design one class way back when, so she sat down and we all chatted and she was really nice so I relaxed a little. We both said we were really scared to have our stuff reviewed ( on a side note, Phil's friend was NOT scared; she was excited because she had her ORIGINALS!!! I still don't know what the hell she was talking about) and we both felt like amateurs in this university crowd. The first two hours took place in the auditorium and we had two different speakers. The first was a hipster husband/wife team that talked about Research-Based Design. Oooo, exciting! The second guy was really funny and I liked his whole presentation.

Then we broke for lunch, which was really SUPER fun because my new nice friend had abandoned me for more Meramec students she saw so I ended up sitting next to the weird girl who talked while she was eating so I had to dodge turkey sandwich chunks the whole time. I bailed on her after about 15 minutes and went and sat in my car. After lunch, we went back in the auditorium for an open portfolio review session. That meant you had to put your stuff out on a table for all the other students to look through. Oh yeah, that wasn't totally embarrassing at all. Especially when the university portfolios had like 3-d package design and professional photographs of their work and these amazing books and stuff. That totally did not make me want to snatch up all my stuff and run for the door. Not one bit. AND most of them were annoying faux-hipsters who spent a really long time making sure they looked "arty" and "edgy" for this gig so that everyone knew they were SO FREAKING AWESOME AND ALSO CREATIVE GENIUSES. I did make contact with a man from a pretty prestigious design firm and I don't know why he liked my portfolio but he did, especially a logo I did for a project 2 classes ago that got rejected by the instructor. I put it in at the very last minute because I always liked it and figured I needed more stuff anyway so that was kind of cool. He gave me his card and I gave him mine. Speaking of which, this was the business card I designed. I didn't have much time to think about it so I will probably change it but people seemed to take them.

(Sorry internet psychos but you can't have my info)

After the open session, we broke into groups with the speakers, which was cool because I got the funny guy and by this point I was ready to go home and he kept it lively so it wasn't all "we're serious designers, people." I finally got to my solo review session after that. Holy lord I was a wreck. It wasn't organized very well so you basically just walked into this big room and there were tables lined up with 2 reviewers at them and you were just supposed to go in and pick someone. That was stupid. Anyway, I picked this guy for absolutely no reason and when I sat down and saw his name, I realized he had come to one of my art classes to speak once. He was really nice as a person but he was kind of harsh on my work so it wasn't a great start. He was more interested in seeing my sketch book than the portfolio. He did give me feedback to work with but jesus, after you hear negative after negative, you start to wonder if you've done ANYTHING right. We had 20 min. with each reviewer but he went over and by time I got up to move on, most everyone else was already seated with someone. I saw an open guy at the next table and sat down and then realized that it was the same guy I had talked to earlier. He liked my stuff okay and he didn't really seem interested in pointing out technical mistakes so it was kind of awkward because we finished up quickly. To avoid anymore awkward silences, I started asking loads of questions about what they look for in hiring a designer and what things I should keep and he did give me some good input on that stuff. The last guy I picked simply because he was also nearby and I was so frazzled at this point that I just wanted to be done. Turns out, he is a design teacher at freaking Meramec. Just great. Obviously he was very familiar with many of my projects and he also started nice but then dug in sharply. He, of course, pointed out my technical mistakes, which I fully admit to having, and he ripped on one of the projects I thought was really good. ZING. Some of the things he pointed out was stuff that I had originally done but had been advised to change by MY teacher so once again I am left wondering what the hell, who do I believe? One guy loved my jazz poster as it was but the other guy wanted me to change the whole layout. Another hated one of the posters that I had just gotten good feedback about 10 minutes earlier. I have about 4-5 pieces that they all seemed to like but the rest I don't know about. After the session, I grabbed everything and bolted for the parking lot. whew.

I'm glad I was brave and went but I'm more confused then ever as to whether I'm really cut out for this. I know that you can't please everyone but if I'm competing with those people I saw there, I'm effed.

Yeah, great weekend! Sick dog and a good ego smashing. Fabulous!