School Daze.

You know, I never I thought I would be excited about school at my age but I am (at least for the first few days until the assignments roll in.) When I was younger I wasn’t a very good student. I would spend most of my time in class honing my doodling skills. Putting down on paper whatever popped into my head at the time when I supposed to be paying attention to whatever the teacher was saying at the time. I would either be trying to replicate some cartoon I had watched that morning or creating a caricature of someone in the class (usually the teacher.) Once in a while I would end up drawing one of the girls next to me; usually they would catch me sketching them and think it was cool that I drew a picture of them. Yeah, cool that I could do that but not cool enough to date (in hind sight nothing was lost there really.) Now if one of the boys thought it was cool that I could draw? Eh, who am I kidding? They probably would have given me a wedgie, stolen the drawing and presented it as their own work in art class. Eventually it got to the point where I could draw and listen to the teacher at the same time. This would cause a many embarrassing moment for whatever instructor who caught me when they would ask me what they just said. The look on their face when I would repeat what they just said was priceless. Even though I was half listening most of the time I would still get decent grades in school.

The “doodling to stay awake” habit carried all the way into my professional life as well. As a matter of fact, unlike school I got into trouble for doodling in a meeting once. According to my boss at the time who kept me “after class” I was causing a distraction during what was supposed to be a VERY crucial marketing meeting for our department. The meeting consisted of our team watching a video of people participating in a survey where “hidden’ camera was positioned in such a way that we couldn’t hear what they were saying or see their faces. Plus, the video was in black and white. How could I NOT doodling during this!? He asked to see my notes from this meeting and I told him I didn’t have any because I was doodling to stay awake. He asked to see the doodles then he asked me to sign and date them. He took the paper, put it in a folder and proceeded to tell me if I doodled during a meeting again he was handing that sheet of paper over to HR. The look of disbelief on my face was pretty obvious along with the “Are you nut?” face I had on too. After that “good cop, bad cop” meeting my boss came over to apologized for his tactics and added he thought the drawings were really good. I left the department for another division two weeks later. Three weeks after that the department was shut down and my boss was laid off never to be heard from again.

I still doodle but not as much as before (despite my addiction to sketch books.) I actually pay attention in class now (still not so much in meetings) I want to hear what the instructor has to say. When I told people I was going back for my masters some of them thought I was crazy. Why would you spend all that money? What about your job now? Why would you start over again at your age? Never mind the comments and looks I would get if I mentioned doing an internship. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices in order to change our fate and yes, at my age it is tough and scary. But we do what we have to do to get through it and nothing worthwhile is EVER easy. I have turned down parties and given up A LOT of free time to do this. Coffee has become my friend and sleep is something I do at the most inconvenient moment. But I’d rather be doing this right now than slowly dying of boredom and stress in a job I don’t like with no with no hope of parole. At least now I have a chance to get some of that spark back that was sucked out of me years ago from sitting in drab cubicles and under fluorescent lights. I may not get all of my soul back but I can feel it growing back little more each day and it feels like it’s ready to move as well. I hear out west is nice.