A doodle in a lecture/class/lesson is a way to fill the time till the long hand reaches the 12, amuse yourself and others, vent the subconscious, make priceless masterpieces, or just annoy the person at the front who can't keep your attention.

Doodle purists maintain that only the stub of a pencil or a leaky pen should be used on the scrappiest of scrap paper or in the margins or half finished work. Times are changing however, attention spans grow shorter or the curriculum simply grows more bland. Doodles take form from anything found in a pencil case, highlighters and even pencils with rubbers on the end.

A good doodle generally starts off with the doodler letting their mind and doodle-tool wander whilst still paying attention to whoever is talking. This first phase is known as 'Entering Boredom', the doodler is in a daydream state usually whatever is preoccupying them at the time is hinted at in the doodle.

It is not until the next phase, 'Through the Looking Glass', that the doodle will actually take on real recognisable form, it is at this point the doodler realises that the doodle is of far more importance than what they're supposed to learning (or indeed already know). During this phase the doodler still hasn't decided what they're doodling, but they devote more and more of their attention to it. By this time those nearby may notice that doodling is indeed more exciting and join in or create doodle universes of their own.

If the doodler is confident in their ability to doodle they may let their canvas take up a whole sheet of paper, whereas a weak doodler will never stray beyond the margin or that extra big line at the top an bottom or the page. It is at this point that the doodler may enter the 'ah, it's crap' phase, lose faith, scribble a bit, then try and catch up on what they missed.

A true doodler can easily doodle for 10 minutes without any clear target of what they're doodling, in any case at some point an idea will crystallise in the doodler's mind of what they're doing, it may even join up previous doodles.

When a decision has been made the doodler is in the 'Doodle Zone' (or DZ) they are at great risk of being caught, the danger they are in depends on the type of lecture/class/lesson, but valiantly they continue sometimes even using techniques like shading or smudging.

The Doodle Zone is an altered state of awareness not quite zen or enlightenment but a full connection with the doodle and canvas, being one with creative forces. In the DZ a doodler may let their subconscious guide them or they may take a more controlled route through, facing challenges such as 'bluntness' or 'lumps under the paper'.

Like all great things time in the DZ soon draws to an end, through interruption or the minds inability to maintain the energies needed to keep the equilibrium in balance. A doodler can sense when they're leaving the DZ, it is a feeling of falling out of the canvas they're drawing on back into reality usually know as 'being back among the living' often only consolable by a small sandwich.

After leaving the DZ doodlers can feel lost but if they walked their path through the zone right then they will see a beautiful creation spread before them, if not then the results can lead the doodler to question why they bothered attending the lecture/class/lesson in the first place.

Few know what it takes to walk the right path in the DZ, those who try to find out run the risk of getting lost and never finding their way back into the world, they are unable to appreciate what they've doodled until someone guides them out with the lure of a three layer sandwich or other such treasure.

It is said that no two journeys through the DZ are ever the same, nor is the doodler the same once they pass through and it is meaningless to use words such as depth or intensity when describing a journey, the doodle speaks for itself.