Monday, July 18, 2011

Note to Self

Blah blah blah, more packing tonight. Desk? Packed up. Purses? Packed up (gently, in one enormous bag). Bookshelves? Finally...packed up. It makes me feel smart to have so many books. It also makes me feel very weak because I can't lift any of the boxes. Anyway, I had to do some sorting of my old college notebooks. Does anyone else keep theirs? I just can't let them go. If I ever want to re-learn Astronomy, I can teach myself from those notebooks. Or so I thought. Turns out I did a whole lot of non-note taking in my note taking notebooks. If I want to relearn anything, I'm going to have to a whoooooole lot of sorting through some pretty amazing and elaborate doodles. So why do I keep these noteless notebooks? I guess it's 'cause I'm a pretty bomb doodler.

In between lecture notes from Media History and Culture, I managed to teach myself to draw CURSIVE BUBBLE LETTERS. That's talent, yo. Apparently, I had a problem with the lower-case cursive "s" though. From the looks of it, thought, it only took approximately 6 lectures to perfect every single letter. There were 3 pages of me just writing the alphabet in cursive over and over and over. Also, it appears that the printing press made an appearance somewhere between the 4th and 5th class.

After my freshman year, I was free to take all the Writing courses I wanted. You'd think that, being my favoritest classes ever, I'd be able to refrain from doodling in them. Not so. I'd doodle what appears to be poetry in my Poetry classes. What was that game show where they try and guess the puzzles based on pictures? You know, like a picture of the United States + an empty soup can + and eyeball + child's doll = American Idol? Yeah. Mine were very similar. I couldn't understand approximately 99% of any alleged poem. But I'm sure they were very prolific. There were like a zillion hearts involved. Sounds like I was preeeeeeeeetty happy. On the other hand, there were lots of "H + 8" too. The plot thickens...

Apparently during my Junior and Senior years, though, I really buckled down in class. I had organized outlines, the occasional Ven Diagrams peppered throughout neat, clearly worded notes, and even footnotes. Sure there were tiny little hearts and stars bordering some pages, but their presence was irregular and sloppy.

Then came my last semester. Each notebook has one page filled out. A few clumsily written notes on the syllabus, and whether or not we were graded on a curve. Then nothing. No block letters, no adorable little stick figures handing one another a bouquet of daisies. Just that one page of Day One notes.

I still doodle a lot. I'm particularly proud of a very elaborate hand-turkey, who sports an eye patch and an exact replica of a Kate Spade purse. I drew that during a meeting at work and it still hangs on the wall in my cube.

I don't know what I'm going to do with all those college notebooks, though. For now, I've packed them up and labeled them "Pharon - Desk/Writing - KEEP". I can't help but be very proud of them. What if I end up to be a very famous arteeest? Those doodles could be worth billions of dollars. It's like an investment in my own future. But be forewarned - there were the occasional instances of NSFW Anger Doodling, which consist of happy puppy dogs flippin' the bird to an angry looking Shakespeare textbook that's frowning with slanted eyebrows. Sometimes you just can't censor the creative process.

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