Most Useful Class in High School – Typing
Probably one of the most useful courses I took in high school. As a programmer this is invaluable. Not that you need it to type code as much, but for communication and documentation it’s a must. My only regret is not really learning to touch type numbers. Just didn’t have the motivation at the time. I don’t have any 10-pad skills either. I may have developed this if I studied accounting in college.
Sucky handwriting is another reason. I have nice handwriting when I take my time. It’s just to inefficient. I think my grades suffered in school (Especially in creative writing.) because of my penmenship.
Manual typewriters solved the handwriting problem. The actual typing was fine, but the editing was horrible. Whiteout. That onion paper stuff that you were suppose to be able to erase on. No way was I going to redo it. And my writing suffered. I had one college professor who suggested I go to the writing lab and get my skills in order. Talk about a shock. The man was basically saying I couldn’t write. For all practical purposes he was right.
During my final paper in college I used an Apple computer at the grade school where I was doing my student teaching. The word processor was called “Bank Street Writer. I would get my thougts down on disk. Go back and edit. Still nothing printed yet. I wrote the paper as I went along instead of wasting an entire weekend trying to crank it out at the last minute.
If you havn’t learned to type, get started. There’s lots of software out there to use for a teaching aid.
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