My ex-dissertation advisor, who is 60, told me that not only did the department have older women who typed your dissertation for you when he did his, they also fixed your grammar and spelling and stuff so you didn't have to worry about those things. I think he got his PhD in 1975.

If I were one of those women, I would have been hard-pressed to not bring a machine gun to work one day.

Also, I don't touch-type. But I am damned fast with the two index fingers. Except for that annoying ' ; key thing.

My sister had touch-typing classes in high school. I thought it was N. American bullshit classes. We only had five computers in our whole school in England. And many kids just never used them.

And here I am, at one all the time, touch-typing away. But I don't know how to do it properly. I cheat a lot. And get sore forearms.

Headache + two co-workers on lengthy and lively conference calls + a co-worker who insists on clicking his pen constantly = very unhappy Suzi.

If I were one of those women, I would have been hard-pressed to not bring a machine gun to work one day.

This is what my mother was hoping to avoid. I never took typing in school, but do touch-type now, if not quite "right."

My grandfather was an automechanic but he refused to teach my dad anything about fixing cars in the hopes that he'd do something else with his life.

Conversely, my Dad could touch type 90+wpm on a manual typewriter (missing fingers and all) and encouraged me to take typing.

Which I did for two years in HS. And then proceeded to type papers for money in college and support myself with the mad typing skills for years.

We were required to take a half year keyboarding class in high school, however, I somehow got out of it because I typed all the copy for our school paper (people turned in hard copies of their articles, I edited them and typed them in and then our advisor did a final check). The end result is that I type fast, but not correctly at all. My typos lately seem to come from being on a netbook. I cannot get used to the smaller keyboard, since I sort of touchtype, but not using home row, or my pinkies or any discernible system. I think it is based on how far my fingers stretch for things.

My mom made me take typing in high school (for a semester). It was a very annoying class, because more of it was focused on the "appropriate" way to type a letter and so on...but I do admit, the fact that I touch type probably over 100 wpm is very helpful, now.

The typing class I took in 1979 (8th grade) was probably the most useful class I ever took. We learned on manual typewriters (the classroom only had a few electric ones), and the error rate allowed was only one per one-minute-long test. I got up to 59 words a minute with one error, which I of course rounded up to 60 wpm when it came to job interviews.

Oh, and I knew a woman 3 years ago who refused to learn word or excel because she wanted to work only in theatre and not get an office job. She was doing Box Office and insisted on not letting me teach her how to use the tracking spreadsheets I set up.

Also, I use excel in theatre all the time.

I tried learning typing at home at two different times and it never stuck. I do not touch type and I type slow.