Welcome back to a brand new quarter of this school year! We hope you all got to make every minute count during your Spring break, and that you’re all fully recharged. You’re halfway through the semester, so just keep powering through!

While you guys were out, we were doing what we always do: keep dishing out fun and cool info about campus life and beyond at the Academy. Between career-defining tips and awesome contests, you’d want to get on board this recap.

Forecasts

As much fun as you may be having in college, it’s important that you don’t lose sight of the reason why you’re here in the first place. Whether it’s for you to find a stable corporate job at the end of your four-year course, or if it’s to become your own creative entrepreneur, the main thing is for you to set your sights on a goal in the future.

So for last week’s course spotlight, we presented to you the Audi project of the School of Industrial Design students. This industry collaboration with the automobile maker had them setting their sights to the future, literally. As in all the way to the year 2040. If that isn’t something to look forward to, we don’t know what is.

Speaking of looking forward, another thing you should be preparing for is your future in career-slash-employment. In case you’re having certain doubts as to why you’re taking up a creative degree, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to put the skills you learn here to good use. It’s true: creativity is the top skill that employers look for in their new hires. So hang in there, and trust that you’re walking down the right path.

Contests

Winter is coming. You know nothing, Jon Snow. Hold the door! *insert other cool quotes from Game of Thrones*

Yep, the beginning of the end is a mere couple of weeks away, and fans are beside themselves trying to take in as much as they possibly can before the curtain finally closes on Game of Thrones.

We’re totally hopping on board that bandwagon, of course, and so launched a Fan Art contest. With actual awesome prizes. It runs until April 10, so you still have time to get your work submitted.

Beyond fan art for fictional realms, however, there are also other more pressing issues that we have to face as a community here in real life. As April is Sexual Assault Awareness month, the Campus Life office also launched a poster-making contest. Results are to be announced tomorrow so do stay tuned here for those.

Up This Week

Today is April Fool’s, but we’re not kidding when we say we’ve got another filling week for you. There’s that really cool Fashion x Apple collab happening, for one, and then a bunch of exhibits at our very own Academy galleries, a cool retrospective from the SF MoMA, and some good-natured comparison between Visual Development and Illustration for course highlights.

And then some. So stick with us; we’re here to cushion the blow of your first week back at school coming from Spring Break.