National Portfolio Day review

This is another piece of occasional writing by my friend Cathy:

I just got back from being a school chaperone at the National Portfolio Day
event. I was a last minute addition to the roster, when another chaperone
cancelled. Ms Art Director hand-picks chaperones from junior and senior
parents using some unspecified criteria, and although I dutifully sign the
arts school parent contract each fall that promises I will serve if called,
I've never made the list.

The day started at the school here at, I'm not kidding, 6:30 am. Starbucks
was not open yet. Students had to be dropped off, with lunches and wearing
the visual arts department's purple t-shirts promptly at oh-freaking-early.
Portfolios had to be loaded, chaperones had to be directed, the studio cat
had to be fed, and kids had to board the buses by no later than 7:30 -- and
we made it just in time. Amazingly, there were no complaints.

We reached the hotel in Houston at around 11:15, just in time to unload the
portfolios, fill in all the registration forms, and get everyone in line
--at first 4 lines (one for each room of admissions reps) and then, for some
administrative reason, re-forming one single line. We were not happy about
the mix-up, or the fact that some of our students ended up losing places in
line for particular schools as a result. A compromise was reached, though,
so that when doors opened at noon, those people in the purple shirts could
go into recruiting rooms first, in the order in which they were in that one
single file line.

The other chaperones & I held places in line for people who needed bathroom
breaks, fetched water and cookies, lugged portfolios, and observed. We were
under strict orders from the VA director, who as you may have guessed is a
person so fierce that even I don't dare mess with her, to otherwise keep the
hell out of the process. Observations in no particular order:

** Nowhere else on Earth, could it be said of the adolescent g/t males in
this arts program (as was said at one point when some of the girls were
checking out the guys), that "all the guys here look alike." It was true.
If this isn't an oxymoron, they were uniformly eccentrically dressed (after
all, the art director didn't tell them HOW to wear the purple shirt, or what
to wear with it, which leaves a LOT of room for individual expression), all
wearing the same well-practiced expression of, "I'm a genius and above this
stuff, but please, please PLEASE, approve of me," and all toting artwork
with a tenderness usually reserved for newborn babies. And they were all, to
a man, fidgeting. I mean, really fidgeting. Dancing, with or without ipod
headphones, or sketching in a sketchpad with ebony pencils, or sketching on
their own arms with permanent markers. Oddly, none of them seemed to be
checking out the girls.

** Having no one else to compare themselves to but one another, the kids at
this school have absolutely, NO idea how talented they are, or how much
they've done -- until they join a group of "normal" (translation: MERELY
highly gifted) high school artists. Just NO CLUE ... until the person in
front of them at a recruiter's table lays out a perfectly, respectable solid
portfolio. And even then, their reaction is one of puzzlement more than
arrogance or pride: why didn't that guy bring his GOOD stuff?, or his stuff
from senior summer?, they ask each other privately.

** Getting no direct face-to-face feedback from anyone other than each other
and the aforementioned fierce art director, they handle evaluations,
criticism and questions about their art without a shred of defensiveness,
and with amazing maturity. Nothing the evaluators threw at them phased them
-- they've already heard worse, or weirder -- and no question was too
off-the-wall to consider. (It occurs to me that this is not so much an
artistic development as a life skill. No matter what they do in their adult
professional lives, the ability to present their work and answer questions
about it will be valuable, and if they already, at 17 and 18, have it down,
this can only be a good thing.) They especially like evaluators who speak
their cynical, scared language because it offers hope that there is Life
After This. By unanimous decision of students the best & most promising
evaluation for a self-portrait piece came from one RISD assessment: "Dude,
you need HELP. DEEPLY disturbed, you are. You're what we're looking for."

**Requiring those purple shirts made a lot of sense. Not only did it help
straighten out the line screw-up and let chaperones instantly know which of
the fidgeting, eccentric, cynical and scared guys were ours, portfolio
evaluators were pre-disposed to give good, meaningful criticism to anyone
wearing a purple shirt. The reputation of Ms Fierce Art Director precedes
them. "You guys and HSPVA are the only reason we'll come to Texas," was a
common phrase. "We'll always look at one of Ms Fierce Art Director's kids."
Some of them chose to interpret this to mean, "We know Ms Fierce Art
Director verbally abuses her students, who also have the burden of having to
live in Texas, so we feel sorry for them."

**For some really, really smart kids, there's more money in art scholarships
than there ever will be in academic scholarships -- or would be, if they
even cared enough about grades to actually attempt to earn one. To those
raised with more conventional definitions of scholarships and of what
constitutes a Worthwhile Achievement, this can be boggling. From a student
who is in the top 25% of her class but not the top 10%: "Can you BELIEVE,
that guy from Purchase said they'd GIVE ME MONEY? My father will CRAP."

** Art is work. 4 hour drives each way, 13 seniors, 40 schools to choose
from, 4 hours of evaluation time, and each student met the director's goal
of being reviewed by 4-6 schools and bringing home 2-4 applications for art
schools that "want me to apply and I think it would not suck to attend." Not
one of the 13 had time to eat lunch, and all of them acknowledged they have
a lot of work to do before they're ready.

**Chaperones & students had dinner together before leaving for home -- and
in the conversation, eventually, a few of the seniors admitted that maybe,
just maybe, they are really good at some things, things that other people
will never be as good at as they are, and that maybe, just maybe, there are
places where the things that they are good at, will matter and make sense
and be important to people who are also good at those things.

** And I looked around the table and thought that maybe, just maybe, that
has some bearing on Ms. Art Director's selection of chaperones.