Thanks to one of the best Firefox add-ons (StumbleUpon), I recently came across a blog that drafted some interesting design rules.
http://hi-and-low.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/a-new-year.html
These were rules from the “Immaculate Heart College Art Department”

1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.
3. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
4. Consider everything an experiment.
5. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
8. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
10. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” – John Cage.

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

I thought the rules were rather interesting, especially since I am spending most of my time in design classes right now. #2, #3, #7, and #8 are the ones that spoke most to me.

I wish I had something more profound to add about the rules, but I think they speak to people who spend their time trying to create something. The rules made sense to me, and thinking about them made it easier to cope with some of the stress generated by our schedule this quarter.