A professor told me my site sketches were too neat to be useful

Last semester during a field school in New Mexico, my instructor pulled me aside after I spent hours making a perfect drawing of a test unit. He said, 'Wendy, that looks like a final report drawing. I need to see your thinking - the messy lines, the notes about what you're unsure of.' I was trying to make it look good, but he needed to see my process. Now I keep a separate, rougher field notebook just for my on-the-spot ideas and questions. Has anyone else had to change how they record things in the field?

3 comments

3 Comments

bell.felix2mo ago

Remember how old explorers' maps had sea monsters in the blank spots? That's what a messy sketch is. Your neat lines make a border, but the ugly notes in the margin are where you admit, "here be dragons, I don't know yet." That doubt is the most useful part.

the_anthony2mo ago

Oh man, that hits home. My first field sketches looked like I was trying to frame them for a museum, not use them to figure anything out. I was so worried about looking sloppy that I hid all my actual questions and guesses. Your professor is totally right, in my opinion. The messy version is the real tool, the clean one is just for showing off the answer you found. I had to learn to let my notebook be ugly on purpose.

hannah_perry2mo ago

I read a blog post once that called messy notebooks "thinking with your hands." It made me feel a lot better about my own scribbles.