Did You Take Typing?

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by Brianna

I (and all my ilk

You have ilk?? Can you introduce me to them?

When I was in 10th grade my mom decided I shouldn't have two study halls*. So she made me take typing. I came in in the middle, so I had some catching up to do, but I did OK. Our typing classroom had a bunch of old manual typewriters. (This was in 1982 I think so the manual ones were really old hat.) The angle of the keyboards was pretty steep, and you had to exert a fair amount of force just to get the key to work. So, if you got to the point where you could do 40 or 45 wpm on one of these monsters, you could flat out fly on an electric typerwriter or a computer.

It actually helped me a lot. Not only did I learn to type fast, we also had to do things like footnotes. (You haven't lived till you've manually spaced the footnotes on a typewritten page.) This definitely gave me a leg up in typing my own papers, as well as those for other people (which got me a bit of pocket change in college). I consider it ironic that the advent of word processors that will do all your footnote spacing for you on the fly coincided with footnotes going out of fashion in favor of endnotes.

*Yeah, two study halls. The day was split into eight periods. I was taking American Lit, AP Calculus, Physics, AP European History, AP French, and PE. It sure sounds like an adequate amount of work to me, but all mom could see was "TWO study halls?? Every day???"

[elSicomoro]

I took Keyboarding/Typing my senior year of HS (1993-1994) using IBM electric typewriters and enjoyed it. But between that class and the work I did at the time (lots of data entry), I had carpal tunnel at 18.

I think the last time I was tested (2 yrs ago), I was in the neighborhood of 60 wpm/10,000 kph with 99% accuracy. Fortunately, I don't do nearly as much typing as I used to, so CTS is not much of an issue anymore.

[Undertoad]

In 11th grade I took Typing, as a way of having an easier class in my schedule.

In 12th grade I took Electronics 1, a "shop" class, as a way of having an easier class in my schedule.

A year later, as a Computer Science major, I found that those two classes were incredibly valuable.

Never underestimate the value of laziness.

[BigV]

Yes, I did take typing, in High School. I took it in summer school, two summers, back to back. The typing teacher was also my Latin teacher. Also the mother of my girlfriend at the time, Simone. I was ... motivated to do well in class, at least well enough to avoid the ire if not the notice of the teacher. I succeeded.

That typing class was easily the most directly useful class I ever had in high school. Arithmetic and reading are more useful, but came before high school. Writing coherently would be the closest second place class (Thank you Mrs Krecji!). I learned a lot in a schedule much like SD's, exchanging Latin for French (even the Latin was useful), but we only had a seven period day, and I ended the day with sports (swimming and water polo, and I was on the pep squad). I kept busy.

Oh yeah, typing. Took it, endured it, make money from it every day now. Thanks Mrs Leonard.