Often times I find myself playing with pens, chewing on gums/pencils/paper/toothpicks, generally playing with anything I can get my hands on, especially when tr

Often times I find myself playing with pens, chewing on gums/pencils/paper/toothpicks, generally playing with anything I can get my hands on, especially when trying to listen to people or think carefully. As a kid I was always yelled at for playing with things too much, or touching things or having to get a tactile feel for things in order to learn them. Personally I feel like in order to truly understand things I need to get a 'feel' for it and having multiple sources of inputs into my brain helps a lot. So reading/listening to someone speak/seeing someone speak/playing with it for fun/doing work with it are all things I need to do if I want to have a strong understanding. This tends to be a weakness for me in my courses because I have a tendency to take longer to pick up abstract mathematical concepts than my classmates. The advantage is in the next course, say calc II, I usually have a deeper understanding and am able to make up for it. I am not sure if this is a result of me doing more work with the subjects or if its because I was able to learn it in more 'ways' than they were. Chewing gum doesn't seem to work for long periods, in my experience, because the gum looses flavor and or changes consistency so much that it just barely distracts me. If it doesn't change it tends to fall into the background. If thats the case I start to 'play' with it in my mouth making shapes, or folding it, all things to keep my brain busy.