The ups and downs of life

Some days I feel like I am on top of the world. Things are going my ways. I am not super stressed with school work and life. I am feeling like i have alot of really good friends, I am feeling like I am in the right place spiritually, I have a high self confidence, I feel like I am on the right track with school and my future is looking good. In general life is great.

Then there are days like today, where I feel like I have made all the wrong decisions in life, and i am heading in a direction i really dont want to be going in. I know why i am feeling like this today, and i really just need to vent a little bit. This post will probably be a bit of a downer, so if you are not feeling like reading a whole bunch of negative talking... I wont be offended that you dont read it.

So today, a guest artist came to speak to the graphic design majors. We have seminars once a week and I have been going to them for the last 4 years of my life. This year, being an 'advanced' student (meaning I am in my senior year) we have the privileged of having these guest artists come and critique our portfolios and give us feedback on what they would have us change, were we interviewing with them. This week, Hilary Wolfe came. She is a Utah state graduate who has made it big. She was really awesome, and way funny. But after talking to her I feel so frustrated..... for the last three years of my life i have been working with 3 professors; Bob, Alan, and Dave.

They are all great and have all done really great things in the design field. But after meeting with Hilary today, I realized how much their differing opinions have really screwed me up. The over all critique of my portfolio from her today was that i am good at making things look good, but that the concepts are weak.... ok, i knew that! that is something that i have fought with bob over for 3 years..... I guess what i am getting at, is that i know that art us subjective but I have three teachers that dont agree on anything. For the first 2 years I had bob, who loves coming up with crazy ideas and loves clean design and likes to push the concept behind the design so far that the concept virtually is gone. Alan who will never tell you anything is good, who wont really tell you anything to change he will just say 'yeah so, i think this is pretty good. i mean its not great, but its pretty good.' or 'yeah thats really terrible, you probably shouldn't put that in' and then a guest lecture will come in and say something different and he will agree with them. I just dont get why he cant tell us what they are telling us before we show a professional our work. Everything Bob says that he likes, are the things that Alan says to take out and the thinks that Alan loves are the things that Bob has told me are not very good. I only took one class from Dave, but he didnt really give any restriction at all. there was no conceptualizing behind our sites and really i dont think he cared what it looked like as long as we learned how to code and we did it correctly. I feel like in the almost 4 years I have been persuing a graphic design degree I have gone from having complete confidence in myself and my work, to not knowing what good design even is anymore and only feeling good about a project after i get a good critique from my teachers. I feel like i have spent 4 years and $20,000 to get to the end and be so frustrated with myself and what I am doing, that its not even fun anymore.

Ok, on a more positive note. I really do love my major most days, but bottom line– Hilary Coming today was a real eye opener as to how much I really have to do this semester. But without knowing who to trust as far as advice on my portfolio goes, I guess I will just be winging it and hoping that my own judgment is good enough.