It was one hell of a ride! Let me start from the beginning. So there's this cool uni that every cool art kid wants to go to, the University of Art and Design in Cluj. I was one of those kids. I spent the past weeks, besides playing games and watching anime, preparing for my college admission "contest" (because a lot of people sign up) - studying a bit of anatomy and proportion and polishing my portfolio. Went to Cluj with all my stuff on Saturday, so that I could finish the remaining drawings that needed additional attention, and to get to know the city a bit more. Our first drawing trial was on Monday, where we had a portrait. Sounds easy enough. 5 hours on a single portrait should be the easiest part. Except that the model's face was shiny and greasy, my easel was wonky and facing the window, and the sun decided to shine in that one angle that made my drawing impossible to see because of the shimmer of graphite. Not only that, but the lighting was always changing and the guy's face sweat and grease started to disappear gradually, as I was desperately trying to get it right. Once that was over, I thought I was doomed, because I didn't have time to finish the shoulders, so my drawing was literally just a head and a neck, maybe a little lines that suggest there's shoulders too. Dunno how, but I got an 8.5/10 on that, which made me the 10th best of the 114 applicants. The first 57 advanced further, to the second trial, where we had two 5-hour days (10 hours total) to do a portrait with hands. I learned from my mistakes so I decided to use charcoal on this, and did a little experimental study with that, because I used brushes to smudge and blend the charcoal instead of using my fingers. That second one turned out a lot better than the first one, and it went a lot faster than I expected, because I already finished my drawing in 7 hours. I was not out of the woods yet, because the interview still remained. Now, there were some people that went to a national contest in 11th & 12th grade, which meant that hey had the chance of skipping their admission contest, given they had a solid portfolio. 2 of my friends participated in the early showing of their portfolio and I've heard war stories from that, since more than half of those people were rejected, including one of my friends. Naturally I was nervous, because the rejected friend told me the lecturers didn't even look at the digital artworks because they're really against that. That said, I had 11 digital drawings out of my 27 pieces. What I didn't know is that they were super strict on the other portfolio viewing, because they expected a lot from national contest winners/attendants, because they didn't get that far for nothing. Fortunately, they didn't complain about my digitals, because they had no expectations from me, which was nice. Overall it went really well and I ended up on 13th place with an average score of 9.05/10 and I won't need to pay tuition fees, because the first 26 spots are funded by the government which is nice. And that's the story of how I got into college, yayy