How Not To Draw A Diagram

Oftentimes I find myself gravitating towards a whiteboard or scrap pieces of paper during meetings to try to describe ideas I can't quite put into words. I may draw like a second grader (as you can tell from this blog), but the act of drawing helps me describe the problem. And hopefully, the act of seeing me create the concept on a whiteboard one line at a time helps others see the solution.

But, this one time I got so tied up in creating a flow chart for my idea that I didn't realize I'd actually drawn a huge dick on the whiteboard in the middle of a meeting with a bunch of middle aged dudes.

The moment I saw what I created as anything more than a flow chart, I started to frantically erase. I was totally mortified, but if they hadn't noticed I didn't want them to notice now. I realized that my frantic run to the eraser was drawing more attention to the drawing of doom, so I tried to pass it off by drawing something else while still verbally explaining the original technical concept. But I had no reason to draw anything else... so I ended up just drawing a random series of lines and numbers.

It was the actual worst. Although thankfully none of them men called me out on this awkward mistake (which allows a small piece of me to pretend that they didn't notice), I do not recommend drawing a phallic structure during a meeting... ever.

So, like any good engineer I've learned from the negative results and devised a plan to avoid this in the future. I've decided to start using lines and angles in flow charts, instead of using curves and circles. It takes an extra fraction of a second, but will hopefully same me from some awkward erasing aerobics in the future.

Love,

Vanessa