What your doodle says about your noodle...

"Doodling is the brooding of the mind." Harper Book of Quotations

While sitting next to people in college classes for the past three years, I've noticed that everyone tends to have specific habits and patterns in the way that they take notes. Some people bend studiously over their notebooks and never look up to see if the teacher is pointing or making a facial expression (this is me in my Sis. Black's religion class; she talks fast and all of the details are fair game for the tests). Some people scribble a note or two, then wait ten minutes, then maybe write another line. Some people draw big fancy titles and headings, but keep the notes to a bare minimum. Some don't even take notes - after all, what are tape recorders, friends with laptops, and good memories for?

As I thought about the way that different people take notes, I became curious about what constitutes my own pattern of note-taking, particularly over the past semester. So I dug up my notebooks for the Fall 08 semester and looked through them to see if I could find out more about my life as a college student. I tried to be objective. I asked myself, what would an archeologist or sociologist say about me if all he or she had to look at were my college notebooks?

My conclusions:

1. Whenever I want to emphasize something important, I underline it or make a star inside a circle next to it. If it's very important, I might do both. My notebooks are literally covered in underlined words and circles with stars inside of them. Meaning I should practically be bursting with all the knowledge I've acquired, right?

2. I'm not the most consistent of note-takers. I switch pretty regularly from cursive to print (although print is much more common in all of my notes), from capital letters in the middle of sentences (not in the middle of words, thank goodness!) to lower case letters at the beginning of sentences. Insecurity, perhaps? Stupidity? An expression of defiance against "the Man"?

3. I sometimes write outside the lines. I never mean to - but it happens.

4. I like punctuation and use it a lot - semicolons, colons, commas, exclamation points, question marks, hyphens, bullet points, the works. I'll even draw a smiley face if I particularly like a quote or something.

5. Though I don't do it often, with some classes I write down verbatim "quotes" from my professor. Only when they're really too fun to forget. I'll share two quick examples from my Honors 304R film professor Darl Larsen: "I think this class is just an excuse to watch movies and talk about them." "Next time you watch a movie, think about the editing. It will drive you nuts!"

6. I tend to doodle in classes that don't require a lot of brainwork. That means I have a lot of doodles in Humanities and Folklore, and hardly any in my Religion and ELang classes. And what are these doodles of, you may ask? Many things, it turns out.
Hairstyles. Dogs. Horses. Houses. Ballet dancers (I used to take ballet and am still very fond of the grace and beauty of it). Occasionally figures that we're talking about in class (yes, I have a sketch of J. Alfred Prufrock in my Humanities notes, and a doodle of a cherry on a sundae next to my notes on the Cherry group's food presentation in Folklore class). I also draw trees, flowers, and fancily decorated cupcakes. I like things with a lot of detail in them.

7. All my notes (except for a few rare cases in ELang, where I need a pencil because I make mistakes on our exercises) are in pen. I like pen because it will last and it won't break and it's good and dark - easy to see. At the end of every semester, I like to compile all of my class notes and class assignments together in a binder, and the pen makes me feel as if my work is slightly more permanent (although, embarrassingly, the doodles are also permanent). In the future I would like to take a note-taking class offered by BYU; it might even be useful to learn some shorthand if I ever decide to take another class from the speedy talking but thoroughly engaging religion professor Susan Black.