80% of the final exam will be based on the one lecture you missed and the one book you didn't read.

I've been having an eventful week here at school. In fact, since it's the last week of classes and finals coming up next week, I think I've had ever second scheduled since getting back from Thanksgiving. I've mainly just been running around trying to finish up projects. The nice thing about being an art major is that you're usually done before everyone else, but your final projects are always due earlier too. In my Tuesday design class, the creative director for the Gap came in to talk. It was a really good experience. He's pretty young, 32, and was talking all about how he got started and gave tons of suggestions. He oversees all the creative design of the stores, how they'll look inside, all the window graphics, the branding, and packaging design. It's nice to see the transition from underclassman having to take all these random drawing and sculpture classes to upperclassman and being more focused and exposed to professionals in the design industry. It gets me really excited about starting. I'm learning about more and more outlets for designers. I could go into entertainment design and do movie posters, websites, motion graphics, packaging, magazine design, advertising art direction, or publishing and design for book covers. Here's a shot of our collaborative self promotion project we just completed. I was working with a group of 4 and our goal was to creat an effective way to promote and market each individual's design style in a functional way. We chose to do this set of 4 coasters with a vellum package. Sorry for the shitty quality of the picture, I was sloppy, it looks much better in person.





It's also interesting, 3 years into college, to see the different paths all my friends are taking. It's weird, everyone in high school was relatively the same and studied the same things, but now everyone is getting into their majors and going in totally different directions, but each person's specialty is really interesting.

Tonight I went to the bonfire for the upcoming game against UCLA. I always like going to the bonfire each year, but this year was by far the best. My brother came out and I had a late class but rushed over after we got out and caught most everything b/c it was running late. They had fireworks that they shot off from the parking garage and then after the rally, Jimmy Eat World performed. I was pretty far back from the stage, but it was fun to see a live concert for free. I'm exhausted though after running around all day and all I want to do is curl up under the covers.

I also just found out tonight when I talked to my dad that a family friend died this week. His name was Doug and it was the least expected death I could imagine. He went to my church and was somewhere visiting family with his wife when he had a sudden heart attack and died. He seemed pretty healthy too. It really freaked me out to think about it. He was always really nice to me and it makes me really nervous about my parent's health and stuff. I guess it reminds you to appreciate and love your family because something like this could happen any time. I don't know how I'll deal with that.