Your Most Embarrassing Moment

[Trotskilicious]

i mean even writing that i had pangs of humiliation

basically everything i never wanted to be

[reprise85]

that one time i called my teacher "mom"

[Order 66]

i did that a lot too. and one of the teachers was a dude

i would think it's kind of common when you think about it

[Trotskilicious]

it is

[Elphenor]

The times I over reacted to being heartbroken have all been pretty embarrassing.

There should be an app that blocks you from texting when you're emotional. I'm an embarrassing wimp.

[Shallowed]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

The times I over reacted to being heartbroken have all been pretty embarrassing.

Oh god this. When I said that reaching out and apologising to people on Facebook doesn't work, it was because of this.

[Elphenor]

Yeah, and then you look back when you're not all emotional and you're like fuck I burned that bridge, and you try to reach out and fix it but now you're just this pathetic creep stalker in their eyes.

[Elphenor]

Like seriously, why can't my phone be like: "No, I am not sending this gigantic wall of bitch text at 1am. You'll thank me later."

[killtrocity]

8 of mine involve alcohol

[killtrocity]

don't you guys ever like to get drunk and take picture of chicks puking in trash cans? GUESS WHAT I DO

[Elphenor]

Shshshahsh- Shaaamee

[null123]

In 7th grade we were leaving to go to outdoor school and I chugged a Powerade before we left. I was too scared to go to the bathroom because I thought the bus would leave without me. About 2 hours in I was dying, so they stopped three buses on the side of the highway and everyone watched me walk into the woods so I could pee.

I used to consider this my most embarrassing moment but obviously I've topped it 10 times over at this point.

[slunken]

Basketball team. 7th grade. Coach finally puts me in. I catch a rebound and shoot the ball back up. Wrong hoop. Crowd explodes with laughter.

[slunken]

Our school gym was an old auditorium as well so the rows of seats went back for like thirty tiered rows. It was a wall of people laughing at me. I can still hear them.

[slunken]

Probably why I hate basketball too come to think of it

[slunken]

I was 12 dammit!

[null123]

Things that happen at that age really stay with you

[null123]

Yesterday was midterm critique for this design class I'm taking. I've been having a really hard time at school (nothing new, been happening since I was a kid) from anxiety sapping all my energy. So yeah I was barely able to get something together for these five midterm projects. I don't get social anxiety generally and normally have no problem speaking in front of others, in fact I wasn't even dreading my critique at all. But for some reason, as soon as it was my turn to present my work and I started talking, my lungs seized up and I couldn't breathe. So I'm standing in front of the class trying to talk, literally gasping for air and trying to get a grip and I'm pretty sure my voice started shaking too. I went 2nd to last at critique and all the other presentations had gone perfectly smooth and the crits were completely average, just the normal hey this works well, you could consider doing a couple things here, etc. After I finish trying to think of something to say about the stuff I'd made since my mind had gone completely blank, I got the most eviscerating critique probably anyone in the room had witnessed. First the teacher said that I was making no sense and that everyone had stopped listening to me speak and had disconnected. Then he took about 15 minutes of just him going over why my work was lazy, concepts poorly developed, badly executed, overall just "not working" for him, poor choice of frame, felt cheap or gimmicky, dumbed down, didn't communicate, it just went on and on . Then he asked each person in the class to share what they personally didn't like about my work and it went on like that some more. One girl said one of my projects looks like something her little sister would make in kindergarten. I didn't sleep the night before and before anyone started talking I was already obviously stressed so I'm pretty sure the fact that I wanted to cry (something I NEVER do in public) was obvious and everyone was super uncomfortable. By the time we moved on to the next crit I tried to just hang in there and not cry so I could stay in the room and not seem like a bad sport or anything. But my eyes started watering really bad and I'm pretty sure everyone noticed it. Finally got to go to the genderqueer bathroom and bawl my eyes out and then I cried for about 5 straight hours when I got home.

[Trotskilicious]

jesus christ that sounds awful

where do you go to school the Art Institute for Total Bastards?

that's not even constructive! why are they being so incredibly insulting? It sounds like a critique you would get from a pack of internet trolls

[null123]

I go to Art Center

At this point I'm kinda of two minds about the whole thing but in the moment it was just humiliating. Since talking to the teacher and the TA today I feel more positive, they both expressed that they "believe in my work" (??), that I give the most insightful critiques of all the students and they think I'm going to do well in the class, as hard as that is to believe. I have lots of little embarrassing moments just from being probably the most flaky student in the whole school but that was like all the fucking chickens coming home to roost and it felt reeeeeally bad.

Crits in that class are generally actually a little light for my taste, people are still afraid to say anything negative, so when they were finally being commanded to say negative things it was just like wow ok. It felt like I was being made an example of. In general I think people were trying to help or maybe they just felt pressure from the teacher. However if I had known that girl was gonna say my work looked like a kindergarten project I would've taken the time to express that her sense of color is completely tone deaf and that her "gestalt" portrait of Gandhi looked like Dr Bunsen Honeydew.

[Trotskilicious]

you probably should at this point

i still think negative criticism needs to be put in a way where you empower the person reviving it to try again. being ugly or insulting about it does no one any good. i'm not sure what good a public dressing down does, or even the appropriateness of telling you it looks like a kindergarten project

i mean pollock or rothko look like a kindergarten projects to the ignorant

[noyen]

that's harsh just readin that. especially with your feelings included. that kind of stuff makes me not even want to try to be a professional artist. because everything is so subjective and someone could have a headache and just loathe you one day and then see your stuff on another day in a different light and think it's brilliant.

just look at who gets "famous" as an artist nowadays anyway. the barfsys. the thierry guetta's. the ironic art. i dream of a utopia bio-dome where artists can live and play and create with no outside influence for 100 years and then emerge to find everyone dead so they can paint the barren landscape left behind and make the aliens come rescue them and take them back to the mothership.

[Future Boy]

Originally Posted by Charmbag

Then he asked each person in the class to share what they personally didn't like about my work and it went on like that some more. One girl said one of my projects looks like something her little sister would make in kindergarten.

wow your classmate managed to top your asshole teacher

I had to read a report in front of the class in eighth grade and one girl spent the entire time giggling at me and I did completely break down in tears as soon as I finished and ran out of the room to go hide in a bathroom stall which earned me detention
I've completely refused to speak in front of people since which didn't help with my declining grades before they took me out of regular human school

In college I had a required public speakng course (by college I mean bullshit tech school) that I just outright refused to do my final presentation for
I just handed in what I wrote and walked out of the class the day I was suppose to do it
I passed because the school was bullshit

[slunken]

I stutter

[slunken]

Me too
It adds character

[null123]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

you probably should at this point

i still think negative criticism needs to be put in a way where you empower the person reviving it to try again. being ugly or insulting about it does no one any good. i'm not sure what good a public dressing down does, or even the appropriateness of telling you it looks like a kindergarten project

i mean pollock or rothko look like a kindergarten projects to the ignorant

It would've definitely helped if anyone had said one positive thing because I know for a fact there are a couple dimensions to what I did that were not bad. A compliment sandwich goes a long way.

And it is pretty subjective to a point. However, the purpose of design is to communicate. If everyone thinks my work sucks or they don't get what I'm going for, why should I be an artist? I don't think my work generally sucks so I'm still gonna try to be an artist. But I can't just please myself. I guess in the end that's why they say you have to find your audience.

I would (and I know I'm not alone in this) characterize this school as maybe the most conservative design school out there. I chose it for this reason because I don't want people to indulge me if I'm making bullshit, but it can get discouraging if you're trying something new, which I was with pretty much all these midterms. I should've just done really aggressive paintings which is what I know best and spared myself.

Originally Posted by noyen

that's harsh just readin that. especially with your feelings included. that kind of stuff makes me not even want to try to be a professional artist. because everything is so subjective and someone could have a headache and just loathe you one day and then see your stuff on another day in a different light and think it's brilliant.

just look at who gets "famous" as an artist nowadays anyway. the barfsys. the thierry guetta's. the ironic art. i dream of a utopia bio-dome where artists can live and play and create with no outside influence for 100 years and then emerge to find everyone dead so they can paint the barren landscape left behind and make the aliens come rescue them and take them back to the mothership.

I definitely find this teacher unpredictable in terms of how he defines quality, but in a way I guess it comes with the territory. To complicate things further, he himself is a graphic designer, and in the class there are people studying illustration (including me), car design, fine art, graphic design etc. And the assignments are incredibly open-ended, the results extremely varied. Trying to bring everyone together to the same criteria of what is important in design can be hard. There have been many times when everyone said someone's work was mindblowingly great and I thought it was both ugly and pedestrian (I did not say so).

And yeah it's hard to know where to look to define success in the art world. I'm trying to be a commercial artist (probably for video games) but there is so much trash being lauded as genius in every art discipline at every moment, whether it's supposed to be "deep" or just entertaining or both. Because it's so easy to doubt yourself and art is so personal, you really need to be able to have something and someone to look to as a goal, and to have someone whose opinion you really respect look at your art and give you tough but fair critiques. It's rough.

[null123]

Originally Posted by Aeris Hilton

I had to read a report in front of the class in eighth grade and one girl spent the entire time giggling at me and I did completely break down in tears as soon as I finished and ran out of the room to go hide in a bathroom stall which earned me detention
I've completely refused to speak in front of people since which didn't help with my declining grades before they took me out of regular human school

Originally Posted by slunken

I stutter

aw

I have a friend who doesn't have to give presentations because she registered her fear of public speaking with the disability office of her school. Unfortunately it's not interacting with people that gives me anxiety, just life in general, and art especially.