Posted on 08/12/2018 6:39:30 PM PDT by libstripper
I hate to break it to parents who just sent their college-admission-minded progeny to the Tibetan Plateau to churn yak butter, but the smartest summer I ever spent was in secretarial school.
This was back when I was 17, and it wasn’t grist for an essay about a transformative communion with people outside my clique. I wasn’t ripping the blinders from my eyes. I was typing — hour upon hour, day after day, with my shoulders back and my spine straight and my hands just so.
(Excerpt) Read more at outline.com ...
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
I got you beat...my graduating HS class, 1963, had 32 students.
The class before had over 100, and the class after had almost 200.
Our class was so small, we can’t garner enough money to have a decent reunion.
At the interview for my first NYC job, I was asked if I could use an IBM Selectric. To borrow a phrase from the modern novel, “Yes,” I lied.
I headed straight for the local vocational school and my first question was “What’s an IBM Selectric?”
I spent the next week and a half learning how to backspace only once for the i and five spaces for the m and w-—or whatever it was. I think the model had a built-in eraser ribbon.
There was a way to switch font balls but I never got to that at my new job. Didn’t matter at that point.
I taught myself to type over the summer between Junior High and High School. I bought a broken typewriter at the flea market for $4. Took it home, figured out what was wrong with it and fixed it.
I spent at least one hour every day, transcribing random articles from Funk and Wagnal’s.
I took a formal typing class in the 9th grade. (I had been typing for years at home — with two fingers.)
The class was taught by a teacher that should have been a drill sergeant. She could easily yell above the commotion of 30 typewriters.
I hated the class — I thought that if I became successful I would have a secretary to do my typing!
But, the sole redeeming part of the class was being near the girl I adored. Unfortunately, it wasn’t mutual. I did what any 14 year old would do — torment her.
That led to the famous typing class incident... She would have killed me if I wasn’t such a fast runner. Off to the principal’s office we went...
ha!
at one of (then) America’s best academic high schools (where almost every student went on to a top-tier university), the one class that has helped me most over the years was Typing
Glad that Tyoing class worked out for you! /g
Wow. That brings back some memories. Watching the after noon kids shows on KRBC channel 5 in Abilene, Tx and the “Gandys points” used in their little live kid show auction every week day. Thank you very much!
I, too, took typing in summer school, and that skill served me well all my life. I am most comfortable sitting at a keyboard in front of a desktop. I text because I have to, but there is no place like “home row.”
Shorthand was also very useful for taking dictation (my age is showing) and taking minutes of meetings. But eventually that skill was no longer needed. However, the usefulness of typing has not gone away — yet.
I flinked typing in highschool which shocked me when I saw my grade. My grades durin class and tests were good. I also took short hand thinking it would help during future college lectire note taking. But my future didnt turn out tjat way.
It wasnt until the mid 80cs tjat somehow I ended up withthis beast of an electric typewriter like we had in high school. And then stumbled upon an old but familiar Gregg typing book. I made it my mission to learn to typeb and do it right. Even after all those years, that ‘F’ really bothered me and I was determined to overcome it. I was very proud of my 30 wpm!
But in the 90’s several years later, I fell in love with the computer and keyboard. I still had tjat old gregg typing book and so, set out to practice. It was a breeze getting up to 50+ wpm so tjat when I applied for an ems dispatch job, I got tje job because I could type. Todayb I can look around the room and type without missing a beat. However, i absolutely hate this two thumb typing on the phone! I can’t see enough of the page to catch errors, and don’t even get me started on spell correct! I’d almost rather use white out on the screen!
This was a fun thread, thanks for the memories and the many giggles.
Going to bed, read in the morning.
(I always ended with "party"...)
Typing was my saving grace (I took 2 semesters in high school). It’s what got me my jobs at the college print shop, then as a typesetter at an art department, where I learned the art of typography. It eventually led me to editing.
Amazing, since I was never a practical person. I was liberal arts/humanities all the way, although back then such useless pursuits were the cultural norm. Would never do it now. My dad always said, “Learn a skill.”
“In my senior year of high school, I took a class in office machines.”
It’s way past my bedtime. I thought that said “coffee machines” first read-through.
I, too, have an Android, and it's "Hey, Google, What's Sasparilla?" (Just voice, no need to key on an ephemeral keyboard.)
My phone answers, "Sarsapirilla is a soft drink originally made from the Smilax ornata plant, but now sometimes made with artificial flavors."
“Sophomore typing class 1977-78. The only elective class worth a flip....and one that I can use to this day.”
2 years of it in the same time period. A valuable skill AND I was the only guy in the class.
Fish in a barrel.
L
Bailed on my paper route after the summer of my freshman year in high school. Didn’t get a real summer job until after my junior year in high school. So my mother made me take typing in summer school, at a school three bus transfers and half-way across the city.
Never topped 40 wpm, but that summer was probably as valuable as any I’d spent. Once again, my parents, so wrong at the time, turned out to be so right in the long run.
cuz that's where the chicks were.
“Learned the basics of touch typing”
I didn’t take typing but I remember the typing classroom at our high school. The keys were blank.
When computers hit the scene, a couple of decades later, I re-learned how to type - self taught. This time with the back space key, not the eraser. I can easily compose documents using a PC, at much greater speed than I could previously with dictation and a secretary. My problem now is all the / \ @ $ < > keys that were never taught in typing class.
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