EDIT:
I came. I saw. I got ripped a new one.

At first I stuck to some of the smaller stands because it was a bit quicker giving me feedback of what I need to send in (the lines were huge. Like, Batman ride at six flags on Saturday huge). I went to UTs stand quickly, and they were... a quiet bunch. I felt like I had to twist arms to get real feedback, but I don't blame them seeing how they were so big and so many people came through. Still...

I went to a few others and fell in love with Minneapolis, Montserrat, Pacific Northwest, and *romantic sigh* Long Island University. There was a lot of reassuring coos and passing of warm milk and cookies and gentle kissies on the forehead and overall a very gentle atmosphere, and I was an inch away from volunteering to bear the children of the last’s rep, but I'm afraid my love of flattery is getting in the way of a real objective opinion.

Which also brings me to my next point-

Is everyone from Chicago batshit insane, or just the art folk? Or am I just butthurt? Story time!

I decided to try a few bigger schools towards the end to get more crits and less "omg so pritti ilu!". Now, I went to Chicago art institution's stand and the guy was... different to say the least. Now, he took my portfolio and without opening it commented that I should have brought the originals. Now, I don't mind that because everyone else did, but I politely said "hehe, yeah. My art teacher said this is how I should have brought it, but my mistake."

And he starts making jabs about how "most art teachers don't know the first thing about art and never listen to them cause they all suck". Which is ironic because he's representing an art school, but yaknow whatever, no?

So he opens my portfolio upside down, flips through them like you would a book to see how long it is with this look of disgust on his face and stops on my watercolor BGs. Being the first time I have ever used watercolors and as I'm not use to BGs, very, very bad in my opinion. He then proceeds to make a big fuss about how that's the only thing in my portfolio that wasn't "hackneyed" and "soulless" and how that's what each one should be like and all this ripping apart of everything else and starts to rant about school-assigned pieces and how they're all crap and what people just want to see and how I should do more of what I want to and not what other people want to see and how all my character concept art he "already seen" (which, seeing how he didn't actually look at it when he was looking through my portfolio, seems a little unfair but I agree the plainness and simplicity can come off overdone, especially considered the number of OCs out there now) and "half-assed". Oh, this started with my comment "just some watercolor backgrounds. They're not very good" and he responds "DO NOT LETS YOUR ART TEACHER TELL YOU THAT." Which is kinda silly, because she praised it too. It was actually one of the only two assignments I got a 100 on.

So. Does anyone else think it ironic that the one piece he liked and said had feeling was the assignment I felt least interested in and thus put least effort and concern in, and was encouraged by my "ignorant, useless" art teacher? I mean, I would like to think I can take a crit, but when you say "don't do what people want to see, do what YOU want to do" and then they go praising the thing least original and most forced thing in your entire portfolio? Literally yelling about the whole thing? I'm not angry. I was a little dazed, but right now I'm more amused than anything else. I'm not even sure what he was trying to say anymore, but whatever it was it was loud, exciting, probably embarrassing if I was in the right mind to feel so and all in all sounded like the action movie trailer version of an overly aggressive recruiting campaign.

I mean, I don't mind him saying all my stuff is crap and I should quit drawing (well, I do but I can't let crits get under my skin like that). It's the fact he seemed to contradict everything he was saying.

Please tell me if he was ironic, hypocritical or if I'm just being butthurt from getting a bad review. I'd hate to seem like I'm pitching a fit like a 12-year-old for getting some feedback that isn't "lolkawaii", but telling someone they are a "worker ant" for drawing what I do isn't a good way to draw people in.

PS- I did Pratt after that, and they just seemed really, really tired. xD tl;dr: Big schools suck at this.