Friday, July 18, 2008

In high school, I got an A in typing ... REALLY

I am suffering from major jet lag right now. I have been forcing myself to not take a nap at 1:00 pm (my body thinks it is 11:00 pm) and I go to bed only after 10:00 pm. I am thinking that I will get over my jet lag faster if I force it. I am a genius. My mom, who is sleeping whenever she wants is taking four hour naps in the afternoon, a two hour nap after dinner and then goes to bed when she feels like it, has been enduring my lectures for the past two days on how it is going to take her soooo much longer to recover. So how come it is 2:15 in the morning and she is fast asleep and I am wide awake?

This brings me to my post title.

You see, I am struggling to type right now in the dark, by the light of the computer screen. My mom, sister, and 2 nieces are visiting so there are three bodies sprawled out by the computer and I do not want to turn on the light and disturb them. If I could type, then I could breezily blog away on the 23 remaining Israel posts, edit Ryan's paper for his Saturday MBA class, order a new dryer (our's just busted,) finish identifying pictures from the trip, write a letter to my nephew for his second week in the MTC, or prepare my Sunday lesson for Young Women's. Instead, I am struggling with every little keyboard stroke.

So how could I have gotten an A in typing when I have no skills whatsoever? (By the way, McKayla just went into my bed because I am disturbing her. Two more and I can turn on the light.)

I went to an LA Unified High School. Seriously. When I took typing in high school, they scheduled us in a room with no typewriters, no keyboards, just empty desks. The teacher was one of my favorites, Mrs. Sylvia Brown. The first day of class she was laughing over how she was going to teach typing in a room full of bare, regular desks. The next day and every day she tried to get us some access to the one room that had keyboards. She explained the situation to anyone who would listen. One day she invited the principal to our class. She passed out a xerox copy of the keyboard and had us put our fingers on the correct keys. When the principal came in she dictated letters and words for us to type ... on our paper. It was ridiculous, which is exactly what she wanted to show the principal. He said he understood the problem, but the budget had his hands tied. She said, then let me teach them SOMETHING else ... ANYTHING else. He gave some excuse that now all classes were scheduled through the downtown office and it would take months to change it. So everyday we went to class and did homework, studied for tests, and read quietly. NOT. We talked. At the end of the semester, she gave all 30 of us an A since it was not our fault that the district had failed to provide us with proper equipment.

When I was in college, I had to take a class called the Sociology of Education. The last chapter in the textbook was a summary of programs that school districts had tried that were supposed to be great, but ended up being dismal failures. After each example, the professor asked: "Did anyone have that program in their school?" Each time I raised my hand. Finally, he asked me "Did you attend LA Unified?" I responded "How did you know?" He then explained that LA Unified is notorious for trying every bad program. Oh well. I survived. I graduated and still did pretty well in my education. I just learned different things, you know life lesson type stuff.

So as I burn my eyes, I proudly grasp onto my A in typing. Thank goodness for spellcheck.

By the way, I am posting my Israel trip on the days that I actually did everything (for the sake of my history - I love proper sequence.) So things will be appearing as I finish in their proper order over the next week or so. If you really want to read every single word (and I know all of you are glued to your computer anxiously awaiting my every key stroke) then you will have to periodically check on the posts below. They will be from 7/6 to 7/15. I will post on my sidebar when it is finished.

6 comments:

Audry said...

That's the bad part about traveling. It was hard for me to adjust when I got home. Trent and I were up at 3:00 a.m. one day and just stayed up until 8:00 that night. It helped.

Dayna said...

An A? Uh huh? . . . Just kidding. I know I never got an A in typing, mine is terrible, and I love spell check!!! Your trip to Israel sounds amazing!!!

The Queen said...

oh my goodness, that is hilarious.

Rachelle@atticgals.blogspot.com said...

Oh man! I never did take typing. It wasn't required for getting into college, and my schedule was aways packed with essentials. Then I majored in writing, of all things, in college - but I got through it - 2 finger plucking the whole way.

The Doria Family said...

What's a typewriter??? Heehee -- I am actually old enough to remember -- but none of our kids will know the joys of white out!

Just FYI -- my sister also commented on my "spelling error", so as you can see, my typing still needs some work. The crazy thing was that I did spell check it so you know what is in the dictionary!

OlsenFam said...

I got an "A" as well. We learned on typewriters...but how boring is typing for an hour...so we would type to warm up, take a 2 minute timed test and then talk and watch movies for the rest of the period. It was pretty fun! (Somehow, I did learn to type pretty fast- I think between 65-70 wpm.