POSITIVE ASPECTS:
-Teachers take time with each student, with no class going over 21 people.
-Very easy to make friends in this school, with tight-knit student body. Almost everybody here is kind, sincere, honest and hard working.
-Teachers take the time to listen to the academic criticisms of the students either through direct dialogue or anonymous paper evaluation.
-While some teachers are strict and pick favorites, everyone else is very down to earth and is engaging as an educator and friend.
-TERRIFIC library service
-I legitimately feel that I've become a much better artist by going to this school.
NEGATIVE ASPECTS.
-No real campus. Spread across city.
-The Institute Hall dorm, while having free access to the YMCA in the same building, is dirty, disgusting, small and lacking in properly working televisions and ovens.
-only clean building is the Lowell Building, and that's it. The Amherst looks nice on the outside, but is pretty messy on the inside, though since much artwork is done their that would make sense.
-The damage deposit system where a resident must hand a deposit of $250 is unjust because when a student vandalizes something and does not come forward, the cost is split among all residents and taken from their deposits.
-Manchester, New Hampshire is a like dead decaying pigeon captured in a sepia-toned photograph. The people who run this ugly burg give it a really thin coat to make it look professional, and if you look around you'll find some interesting things, but it's still a ghetto city that only has three towers at most. It tries to emulate Boston's flair but fails spectacularly.
-The current "temporary" meal plan the school provides is absolute garbage. I'll explain why:
-for the two meal a day plan, you pay a whopping $1800.00, so it must be quality food, right? No, it's all microwave fast food that was cooked up in another location served to us by a cafeteria staff that cannot give less of a shit about their jobs.
-The workers like to start putting the food away 40 minutes early so they can get work done faster, not really considering the kids who get there later in the 3 hour time slot for each meal.
-On the weekend, where there are only two meals a day nonetheless, dinner takes place between 4:00 and 6:00, when it should be later to accommodate students who work late on Saturday and Sunday nights. It also doesn't help that the first meal, brunch, is from 11:30-1:00, so there would be no need to eat as much as one should with such a short interval. In fact, a couple of months ago we had a petition to change this THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE.
-Food is absolutely tasteless and hard to digest. The meat is bad, garlic bread ALWAYS stale, as are the brownies, and all of the hot stuff is thrown out at the end of the day, a complete waste of our food and money.
-Each meal costs us $7.50, and that money gets spent whether you go or not.
-You can't take leftovers home. If you eat in the cafe and take stuff home, they will try to charge you for two meals.
-One time, I appeared five minutes and checked in before they closed and there was a fire drill, so I was forced to leave. When I came back after the alarm was taken care of, they told me "sorry, we're closed" and I told them to let me in because I paid already and it was unfair to do to a customer. They let me in, get food then leave, but it was still an injustice.
-In the Illustration classes, all you ever do is paint in oil. We don't usually get to explore any other medium in those specific classes except for end of the year stuff.
-If I can think of anything else, I'll add it.