What I Learned in Secretarial School

New York Times ^ | Aug. 11, 2018 | Frank Bruni

[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.

[miss marmelstein]

IBM Selectric - the greatest typewriter ever devised! Especially when it came with a little hood that muffled the noise.

[Drawsing]

I was a sophomore in high school in 1972 in a room full of girls taking typing. I still don’t remember how that happened. I was bad at it and the teacher would startle me by coming up behind me and shouting out orders to the class. After a few weeks she informed me that my hand-eye coordination had not developed yet and that I needed to drop the class. I dropped out happily, but it was too late. I had learned the touch-typing system (except for the row of numbers at the top) and I never lost it. In college, it quickly came back to me and I got better and better at it. It has served me well all through my life and career.

[VastRWCon]

I took a class in HS called “Child Development”, There was only two guys in the class of 25 (23 girls). A friend of my older brother told me take that class it’s all girls.

[Hot Tabasco]

The most beneficial class I ever had in high school was my typing class........It helped me get my Army MOS......

I still can't type the top line of numbers or the non letter keys without looking at them tho.......

[Hatteras]

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” — you type that sentence a lot, because it’s a pangram, meaning that it contains every letter in the English alphabet. You type other alphabetically eclectic sentences and paragraphs, your fingers darting away from home row and hurrying back, again and again, with the goal of these movements becoming automatic. And at some point they do. You turn a corner and the dance of your hands across the keys is no longer a constipated jitterbug. It’s an elegant ballet.

yeah... sadly, I never turned that corner. But Home Ec now. First period. Used to make breakfast everyday. Still do! :-)

[libstripper]

“Wonderful, beautifully written piece. Thank you for sharing.”

You’re welcome. Surprising thing is so far this thread has 66 entries and growing. Must bring back a lot of memories to a lot of people.

[longtermmemmory]

I cringe with seeing someone hunt and peck on a keyboard. It is akin to meeting someone who can not read.

[libstripper]

Another great memory—the hand held manual Curta Calculator. I bought one in 1970 to use in my first job out of the Army when I was assigned to doing trust and estate work. The first handled electronic calculators came out about a year later. I still; have the old Curta in its original box with its original instructions.

This thread’s really gathering the memories of all us old farts.

[T-Bone Texan]

You must have gone to the only other school on the planet that had “Child Development”.

We played with kids. It was fun, and as a young man I was very motivated in learning all about female private parts. The actual birth part was gross, though.

I learned all about labias, and to this day when I have to go #2 I loudly announce to my family in my ominous James Earl Jones voice, “It’s crowning”.

[VastRWCon]

I got the tip so I took it. :)

crowning? How about “Brown Capping”? LOL

[BlueLancer]

My mother took me out of Little League baseball the summer between 6th and 7th grade, telling me that, going into high school, I would need to learn how to type.

She purchased a used manual typewriter and sat me down at the kitchen table every morning with her high school typing class textbooks for four hours of "class". F-D-S-A-J-K-L-; ... over and over again. Then phrases and sentences. My typing speed began to pick up and she began to time me on just about everything: she had my typing from magazines, from my sci-fi books, from the newspaper. I won't say that I appreciated it at the time, but I got through it and became fairly proficient at the age of 12.

I used that skill throughout high school, moving on to a portable electric typewriter .. although I still had a tendency to pound on the keys. When I went to college, I earned quite a bit of spending money by typing other students' reports and essays. And my typing speed and accuracy continued to increase.

Coming out of college, with no jobs at hand, I joined the Army, going into the infantry. In my third year of my four-year enlistment, after carrying an M60 machinegun for those years before being promoted to Sergeant/E-5, I was also the Company Admin NCO because of my typing skills. One day, my First Sergeant came into the office and said, "Costley, you know how to type. Go down to the JAG office and compete for this," handing me an inter-office memo indicating that the 1st Cavalry Division was having "open" competition for a slot at the Army court-reporter school (which, at that time, was just several seats allocated for the Army at the Naval Justice School in Rhode Island).

So I went over to the JAG office as directed and competed against a dozen or so MOS-qualified legal specialists and beat the pants off all of them for the court reporter school slot. That was 1978. I attended the school, graduated first, with the highest final accuracy percentile (which still stands, 99.6%), and came back to the 1st Cav Division to start my new career as a military court reporter.

I remained a court reporter until my retirement in 1995 and competed for and was accepted into the Civil Service working as a DoD court reporter, where I have been working since that time.

Believe me, over the years, the gifts that I have given my mother thanking her for pulling me out of Little League that summer has gotten the point across to her how much I appreciate to where this has all led. I am in a job that I enjoy and where I feel appreciated for my proficiency.

I still have a tendency to pound the keys .. thanks to that early time on a manual typewriter .. and usually go through three or four keyboards a year. Oh, well ...

[BlueLancer]

I did typing class in high school as well.... cuz that's where the chicks were.

I took Home Ec in my senior year (because I had to take some sort of elective) ... and that was a blast.

[Buckeye McFrog]

You learned useful job skills (which is more than you can say of any Ivy League graduates today).

My mom forced me to take typing in high-school. I did not really want to because it was a “class for girls”. My brother resisted more firmly. A few years later when he was paying some girl a buck a page to type his college term papers for him my mom started looking pretty smart.

Today, when we all have keyboards on our desk, she looks pretty damned prescient.

[BlueLancer]

This time with the back space key, not the eraser.

You see, man, we like to feel we can get out of trouble, quicker than we got into it...

[DouglasKC]

Typing class in 11th grade was the skill that I learned in k-12 that served me the best.

However where I really excelled was decades later taking business courses in anticipation of starting my own business. EVERY class then was interesting and consumed hungrily because I KNEW the purpose for them.

I applaud parents who instill purpose into their kids.

[3boysdad]

Did the same thing my Sophomore year in 1983. It was only a one semester class back then on IBM Selectric II’s. It was a very valuable class. I’ve used that skill everyday of my life since then. College was so much easier knowing how to type.

[Sasparilla]

Hey Google? No. I was drug kicking and screaming into the 21st century.