I have an unconventional major—no one really knows whether to call me an artist or not. I study New Media, which covers aspects of art in new technologies; I take studio classes in video art, sound art, photography and more. But because I have coding and web classes, no one can really tell if my major is an art major or not. Even I sometimes don’t know if I consider myself an artist, and surprisingly, neither do a lot of my peers. But after going through my portfolio review, a common thing for visual art students, I will never question if I’m an artist again. Being able to gather all your work since you started college (in hopes that someone thinks it’s good enough to let you stay in the program), without completely imploding, is an art in itself. If you're about to start your portfolio review or are in the middle of it now, here are the 5 stages of portfolio review.

Stage 1: The Chill Prep

You dreaded it the whole break: the day you officially begin talking about your portfolio review and its due date with your advisor. You start putting your ideas together and figuring out what you’re going to put in your portfolio. Coincidentally, this also means somehow being able to decide on a few key pieces that are your “best work”. But if you genuinely care about your craft, you’ve tried your hardest for every assignment and this is an almost impossible feat. I got mostly A’s in all my classes/on most of my assignments. I quickly found out that that doesn’t mean anything, really. I could be getting A’s but soon find out that my work wasn’t actually good enough. But the due date is so far away, there's nothing to worry about right now, right?

This stage includes almost all the weeks leading up to the portfolio. If you’re an organized (read: rare) artist, you’ve probably filled up your portfolio by around 2 weeks before the due date, and basically just have to touch things up (or, in the New Media portfolio review, fix up your website code).

Stage 2: The Week Before (AKA Realizing That This Is Real)

If you’re like me and are a self-identified, coincidentally self-loathing procrastinator, you left way too much work until the last week, and now you are freaking out. Staying up until 3 AM every night, realizing that your favorite pieces are actually not that great, now having to go out and reshoot it, or reimagine it, or re-something it; you have to at the last minute gather all of your materials and somehow pull something amazing out of it. When anyone asks to spend time with you, you very quickly let them know that you HAVE NO TIME FOR ANYTHING FUN OR EXCITING IN LIFE ANYMORE.

Stage 3: The 1,000 Calorie All-Nighter Night Before

Get to your local grocery store the day before your the due date to stock up on Red Bull, sugar, and all the unhealthy things... because there is no way you’re not staying up until an ungodly hour! No matter how much work you already have done, you’re bound to stay up all night adding finishing touches. When you’re submitting a whole collection of your work which decides if you get to stay in your program that you’ve already dedicated years to, no touch-ups can ever be enough. Then, around 4 AM, you wonder if you’ve changed too much, or you’ve looked at the same thing too many times and it’s actually terrible. So you ask your non-visual art peers for their opinions and even though you love and appreciate them, they see your work and tell you it’s “cool”, and you’d rather shrivel up and die than have to blindly submit this portfolio. Note: this will be about the time you’ll start Googling jobs you can get without a degree. Make sure to delete your computer history before your parents see this, though.

Stage 4: The Submission And The (False) Relief

You drop your submission off at the office and feel a sigh of relief unintentionally escape you. All the weight is lifted off your shoulders and now you can relax. When you walk back to your dorm or apartment, you wonder why you even worried so much at all.

Stage 5: The Agonizing Wait For Judgment Day

Then you remember why you worried. Because perhaps an hour later, the nerves kick in. You feel sightly dead inside because you gave all your brain power to this portfolio but you also have to keep up in your other classes and pretend you're not constantly thinking about if you'll pass. You have to wait a week or more for them to get through everyone’s portfolios, and you have to sit around not knowing if they’ve already made the decision to pass you until they let you know. You can only sit back and wonder what you could’ve done more of to make sure you’re up to par. You ask everyone else what they submitted and start to get intimidated by the level your other friends are at, and start questioning how you even got into this major, or art in general, or why we’re all just little specks in the universe.

Maybe you should get some sleep before you go crazy. Good luck, and remember, at least you now have an internal bank of jobs you can get if the whole taking-a-chance-on-being-an-artist thing doesn’t work out!