Pair o' Dime Props: Jackie Andrade

A couple of weeks ago I was in a Faculty Council meeting here at the university. The agenda for this meeting included a briefing from the Chancellor, the Provost as well as the President of the Faculty. Since I am administrative staff, I am considered a guest of the meeting and I sit in the very back; sort of like a second class citizen. Well, as is often the case with these things, they tend to go on for some time. So I was back there with my paper, drawing away. Loops, boxes, faces, sometimes even the back of someone's head. It looks terrible, but it's what I do. Finally, one of my associates leaned over and whispered, "What is this, Art 101?" As for the quality of my drawing, I think she gave me too much credit, but more importantly, she caught me doodling. Immediately, I had that same wave of shame come over me that has happened times before. I remember being in church about 10 years ago, when during the message, my bible study leader who was a row in front of me looked back at me while I was busy illustrating and scowled. Seriously, I felt like I was about 7. I shamefully covered my sketches and tried to focus on the pastor. However, sitting still staring at a speaker doesn't help me very much. What a slacker I was!

So here's my confession: I doodle. Yes, I use an actual pen and paper and draw nonsensical shapes, and scribbles. If I'm daring I may try to draw someone's face. I tend to cover up what I'm doing when I can, but I'm frequently found out. You can sometimes make daydreaming look like you're listening, but it's hard to keep doodling a secret.

Well about a week ago, I was in a meeting again with the same associate mentioned above. This time I was asking her questions and essentially writing down my action items from the meeting. At the end I looked at my notes, which could be found with asterisks, arrows, and other meaningless scribbles and laughed. I showed her the page and mentioned the "Art 101" statement she had made before. She went on to tell me that she had read an article talking about how doodling isn't really a bad thing. She didn't remember the reference so I went and did a doodle google. (Yeah, I know…I couldn't resist). Here is a sample of what I had found. Thanks to the research of Jackie Andrade, it appears by doodling, one is able to retain more information than those who look like they're listening! All of this time, people were looking down their nose at me thinking, "How pathetic! A grown man can't even pay attention," while I was busy retaining the information they were missing while scoffing at me! Ha! I believe I may have to carry around a few copies of the actual abstract of the article so that I can pass them out to anyone who judges my scribblings as juvenile!

So thank you Dr. Andrade, for vindicating my years of drawing while listening.

NOTE: The doodle above is not mine but belongs to a friend who is quite the sketcher! If you click on the picture, you can see some much more impressive drawings.

Also, here is a link regarding this from Morning Edition as well.