It's mind numbingly enjoyable as you said. Drawing has its purposes -- it increases your players' stats, which is helpful by the end of disc 3 when you fly around the planet to get GFs, abilities, and that super cool stat+ ability of Cactaur so you can get perfect stats. Yes disc 1 means spending twenty minutes per battle drawing magics over and over, but it gets easier and easier as time goes on, so it's not as if you'll be drawing magic forever.

One of the most enjoyable things to do is to draw auras from Seifer