4 ms·

When I was in elementary school (in the 80s) I used to fail handwriting over and over. My teacher told me "When you get older, if you want to work in an office,

When I was in elementary school (in the 80s) I used to fail handwriting over and over. My teacher told me "When you get older, if you want to work in an office, you're going to have to have to write a lot of reports, and for that you'll need good handwriting." to which I replied "No, I'm going to work on computers." If I made a font based on my handwriting, it could be considered a type of one-way encryption.

alias_neo 6y ago
I had a similar thing from my teachers in school, my hand writing is illegible. In the past decade or two, I've used a pen for precisely 3 types of thing; greeting cards, signing documents and pub quizzes.
anotherevan 6y ago
I learned to touch type in 1986 on a manual typewriter in secondary school. I knew I was going to work with computers and figured touch typing would be a worthwhile skill. I was the only male in the class and copped shit from my peers for taking the subject as everyone else perceived it as a class for women looking to go into secretarial work. To this day I still think it is the best thing I learned at school.
- flashgordon 6y ago
  I remember doing this as a new immigrant in Australia (92). We were too poor to get a computer and I didn't know how to use one either. So my parents got me taking a train to the nearest station closest to a public library so I could book out their typewriter (yep) for two hours every sat morning to practise touch typing!!
- tombert 6y ago
  Wow, the times have changed a lot! What a silly thing to tell people is "women's work". I wasn't born until 1990, but even in the 80's weren't personal computers a pretty common thing (e.g. the Apple ][, the Commodore 64, Amiga)? I wonder why a guy learning to type wouldn't appear useful to people?
seshagiric 6y ago
One way encryption made me crackup. Also remembered something funny from college. One of our mates had such a poor handwriting that we used to joke our grades were getting hit because teachers were exhausted after reading his answers. Same guy used to get frequent letters from his parents saying they could not understand what he wrote in the previous letter :)
mmm_grayons 6y ago
Hah, same here; my handwriting is like perl: a write-only language.
tombert 6y ago
I had the exact same thing happen to me, and I had the exact same response. My print handwriting is pretty bad, and when I was in grade school in the 90s they were still trying to teach cursive, and my cursive is impressively illegible. My teacher told me that I'm "too smart" to be not work in a high-paying desk job, and that no one will hire me unless I have readable handwriting. I know she meant well and I'm not in any way trying to speak ill of her since I think she was actually a really good teacher, but I seriously cannot imagine being declined for any job (other than calligrapher) because of handwriting, even in the 90s. My response to her was that I can type really fast and that typing will almost always be easier to read than virtually anyone's handwriting. When I took calculus in high school, I initially did my work by hand, but pretty early on I learned how to use MathType with OpenOffice, and then eventually LaTeX. After I turned in one assignment that was typed out and subsequently turned in one that was handwritten, my teacher politely asked me if I could type out all my assignments since he had to occasionally bring his wife in the room to read my handwriting. ----------- Nowadays I still do write down notes by hand with a fountain pen, but the nice thing about notes is that I'm the only one that needs to be able to read them. If I do almost literally anything that I expect people to read, I type it out, either in Markdown, LaTeX, or TLA+ (depending on the domain and how much math needs to be involved, of course).

alias_neo 6y ago

I had a similar thing from my teachers in school, my hand writing is illegible. In the past decade or two, I've used a pen for precisely 3 types of thing; greeting cards, signing documents and pub quizzes.

anotherevan 6y ago

I learned to touch type in 1986 on a manual typewriter in secondary school. I knew I was going to work with computers and figured touch typing would be a worthwhile skill. I was the only male in the class and copped shit from my peers for taking the subject as everyone else perceived it as a class for women looking to go into secretarial work. To this day I still think it is the best thing I learned at school.

flashgordon 6y ago
I remember doing this as a new immigrant in Australia (92). We were too poor to get a computer and I didn't know how to use one either. So my parents got me taking a train to the nearest station closest to a public library so I could book out their typewriter (yep) for two hours every sat morning to practise touch typing!!
tombert 6y ago
Wow, the times have changed a lot! What a silly thing to tell people is "women's work". I wasn't born until 1990, but even in the 80's weren't personal computers a pretty common thing (e.g. the Apple ][, the Commodore 64, Amiga)? I wonder why a guy learning to type wouldn't appear useful to people?

seshagiric 6y ago

One way encryption made me crackup. Also remembered something funny from college. One of our mates had such a poor handwriting that we used to joke our grades were getting hit because teachers were exhausted after reading his answers. Same guy used to get frequent letters from his parents saying they could not understand what he wrote in the previous letter :)

mmm_grayons 6y ago

Hah, same here; my handwriting is like perl: a write-only language.

tombert 6y ago

I had the exact same thing happen to me, and I had the exact same response. My print handwriting is pretty bad, and when I was in grade school in the 90s they were still trying to teach cursive, and my cursive is impressively illegible. My teacher told me that I'm "too smart" to be not work in a high-paying desk job, and that no one will hire me unless I have readable handwriting. I know she meant well and I'm not in any way trying to speak ill of her since I think she was actually a really good teacher, but I seriously cannot imagine being declined for any job (other than calligrapher) because of handwriting, even in the 90s. My response to her was that I can type really fast and that typing will almost always be easier to read than virtually anyone's handwriting. When I took calculus in high school, I initially did my work by hand, but pretty early on I learned how to use MathType with OpenOffice, and then eventually LaTeX. After I turned in one assignment that was typed out and subsequently turned in one that was handwritten, my teacher politely asked me if I could type out all my assignments since he had to occasionally bring his wife in the room to read my handwriting. ----------- Nowadays I still do write down notes by hand with a fountain pen, but the nice thing about notes is that I'm the only one that needs to be able to read them. If I do almost literally anything that I expect people to read, I type it out, either in Markdown, LaTeX, or TLA+ (depending on the domain and how much math needs to be involved, of course).