Partly Cloudy, 64°
"I tried sleeping, reading, balancing pencils on top of each other, but none of it makes the time go by any faster. I just don't know what to do," professed Jeremy Starburg '11.
When Starburg preregistered for "VISA0050:Introduction to Doodling" last spring, he and others like him expected an engaging classroom experience, a breadth of fascinating and famous scribbling techniques, and perhaps the guidance necessary to pursuing doodling professionally. What Starburg did not expect, however, was the unexpected: a snorefest.
The class meets once a week for three hours, during which time students merely copy doodles off of a large projection screen into their notebooks. "I just stopped going to lectures," said Starburg's classmate Allen Pasche '12. "All of the doodles the professor shows us are literally straight out of the textbook." He added, "If he really wants to make us better doodlers he should just lecture us on statistical analysis or the first term of the Millard Fillmore administration or something.
Our pages would fill themselves."
Pasche is not the only student who has given up on the class. Erica Chasser '10 had the foresight to drop the course during shopping period. "Yeah, the first day was pretty interesting. The professor put up a slide show of the greats. You know, Da Vinci, Lincoln, Oprah. None of them payed any attention in high school, and the art that ensued was actually pretty inspiring. Apparently, even Einstein's atomic model was just the result of some free styling during Hebrew School." However, she added, "the class overall felt like what weathered shoppers like me like to call a 'one hit wonder.' I dropped that shit like a hot potato."
Professor of Visual Art Arthur Fantino has since tried to instigate a unique style of teaching that demands that students only write in the margins of their notebooks. "We began with the most basic of techniques: a series of triangles with smaller triangles inside of them, with more triangles inside of those triangles that are smaller still," began Fantino. "The next chapter is about clouds, squiggles and birds that are far away. Eventually we'll get to the more advanced stuff. You know, medieval battle scenes, human eyes, twisty cubes, crude versions of popular cartoon characters. the possibilities are endless."
The only thing that seems endless to students, however, is the weekly lecture. "I tried escaping - going to the bathroom - but even that didn't help," said desperate sounding Randy Shulls '11. "I closed the stall door and looked up and. oh god. It's everywhere. The pictures are everywhere."
Shulls then began sobbing, continuing, "Make them stop. just make them stop." Starburg admits resorting to radical measures to end the monotony in recent days. "Yesterday, while everyone else was drawing a giant kitten using cars as roller skates, I decided to. to. take notes. In the body of the page."
Starburg's "notes" are generally about economics or political science, and fill the controversial 'center space' that exists between the margins. "I know I'll regret not paying attention in class come next midterm when he asks us to draw a stick figure wearing a sweater or a dolphin, but I really just can't keep focus anymore. It's too dull." Shull added, "I just hope there isn't a notebook check any time soon."
