“Don’t doodle if you want to fail!”

At least, that’s what my math professor scolded me for doing on the second day of class. I remember looking up at her with probably the most confused look I could muster, not sure if I had even heard her right. “Don’t doodle,” she said again, “You should never doodle during any class.” My entire class of Business majors stared at me like I was a crazy person and I regretfully had to hold my tongue before I started back sassing one of my professors. Did she not know that it was my major? So naturally when she turned back around I doodled her in my sketchbook as a fire breathing dragon; truly the only form of innocent vengeance I know. I have never done anything like that before, nor have I ever disliked a professor since I’ve started college. Luckily I dodged a bullet with that one and dropped the class because of her disagreeable attitude. Though, despite not having to sit in her class another day for the rest of the semester, her words have continued to fester and bother me. How can you ask a student in the arts to stop doodling? Doesn’t that seem kind of counter productive?

 Recently I brought this up to one of my digital arts professors after her overhearing my struggles with dropping my GE math course from hell. While I was looking for some form of agreement from someone else involved in arts (that what my professor said was essentially wrong and uncalled for) as usual I got a whole lot more than I bargained for and have been endlessly thinking of what we talked about weeks later. My professor was downright furious when I explained the story to her, and it had nothing to do with the math professor’s attitude during the situation. She halted the class and went on a long winded tangent that ran the rest of the class time.

Asking an animator or an art student not to doodle, she said, is like asking a fish to breath on land. It may be possible, but it’s the most painful thing in existence.

After thinking about it, it does seem true. It’s not just art students that have this problem (as evidenced by pages and pages of doodles a fellow student had in their English notebook), but everyone doodles. According to my friend studying pyshcology, doodling as it turns out, is just the natural process our brains use to escape our own brain. It’s how we communicate our ideas through pictures. Doodling comes in handy in art therapy treatments for children who cannot express their ideas through words. In fact, one of the most common methods psychologists use is drawing and children can tell you exactly whats on their mind through drawing images. It’s been proven to not only improve art skills and expand our ability to create with imagination, but it also improves and strengthens memory and retention during actual class!

It seems silly that doodling little hearts, rainbows, caricatures, and paper cups can help improve the way you retain information but it is true. From personal experience, I can always remember where to find certain parts of lectures based on remembering what I was doodling at the time. For art students, doodling helps in many more ways. All ideas start with a sketch and a doodle. In fact, Mike and Sully from Monster’s Inc. got their start on a paper napkin at a restaurant!

 

While it is not always appropriate to doodle in class (sorry if I disappoint you Mom and Dad!), I find that it is far better to break a few in-house rules and start doodling genius ideas in your science notebook. It truly is a release of creativity. It is essential for anyone involved in the digital arts to always draw, and doodling is one of the largest parts of that. Without doodling, you cannot gain new ideas. Doodling is the quickest, and most convenient ways to conceive ideas. And the best part about them is that they are not meant to be perfect. They can be hideously ugly and it wouldn’t even matter. Anyone and everyone can doodle.  I know that I for one will not stop doodling simply because someone doesn’t like where or when I chose to do so. I would much rather spend a few minutes frantically searching for the last blank page in my notebook while my professor quickly recites things that will be on the midterm. At least I will know that I have been drawing, and if I can’t find a page right away due to excessive doodling I suppose it’s alright. In the long run, it’s probably best that I mindlessly doodle because who knows, maybe that doodle will be my life changing drawing that can turn into my next big idea!

So no, professor, I’m not going to stop doodling. Sorry.