Faculty Involved in SACS - USM Forum -- Message Board

Date: Feb 22, 2005

RE: RE: Faculty Involved in SACS

Date: Feb 22, 2005

Invictus, that's the best anxiety-themed nightmare I've ever heard of. Beats the "today's the final and I didn't know I was in this class" one all to heck.

I had a waking one once, worked in IR elsewhere some years back. The DOE (I think) was demanding historical data by race, for a period of time when DOJ or somebody had forbidden the university to gather such data. Wish I remembered the details, but it was very Kafka-esque.

Date: Feb 22, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: stinky cheese man
"think about the real old geezers who had to make copies of their dissertation before there were xerox machines!"

But at least the old geezers could type, SCM, and they could do sp on an Underwood, a Royal, or on an SCM (Oops! your namesake: Smith-Corona-Marchant). That was before they stopped offering real typing courses and renamed it "keyboarding." The early dissertations "keyboarded" on those early computers at USM were so crude in format that I insisted that my students continue to do them on the typewriter until computers surfaced from their Beta versions. While I wouldn't do without my compuer now because keyboarding done on the computer has finally become equal to the quality of work formerly done by expert typists on typewriters (although no faster than an expert typist trained before "keyboarding" became the vogue). I have noticed that many computer users still hunt and peck.

Date: Feb 22, 2005

The only time my father ever intervened in my education, he insisted that I take typing and shorthand in high school. He said something like, "I know you're an intellectual and you're going to college, but you may need a job someday." This was in the days of manual typewriters btw.
Boy was he ever right. I've forgotten the shorthand, but the typing has put bread on the table more than once. Everybody needs to know how to actually do something.

Date: Feb 22, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: LVN
"my father . . . insisted that I take typing and shorthand in high school . . . . Boy was he ever right. I've forgotten the shorthand, but the typing has put bread on the table more than once."

LVN, my mom was a legal secretary and she had the same foresight as your dad. She used her shorthand skills proficiently until she was in her early 80's. I worked my way through college by the stoke of the typewriter key.

Date: Feb 22, 2005

I meant stroke of key, not stoke of the key. Dang this computer!

Date: Feb 22, 2005

quote:
Originally posted by: LVN
"I had a waking one once, worked in IR elsewhere some years back. The DOE (I think) was demanding historical data by race, for a period of time when DOJ or somebody had forbidden the university to gather such data. Wish I remembered the details, but it was very Kafka-esque."

I remember those days. Fortunately, IPEDS now has a "race/ethnicity not reported" category now. On the flip, DOE is still trying to figure out how to incorporate the multiple-response race/ethnicity system used for Census 2000 without gerrymandering it so much that every individual student becomes a distinct minority group.

On the typewriter front, it was probably the only high school class I took where I didn't have to relearn (or unlearn) everything when I went to college. But I also remember when typing a paper implied that it had been through several drafts. Now, students do everything on a word processor & they all have handwriting worthy of a physician. I suspect that the alleged secret classes in "reverse penmanship" for first-year med students are beginning to be phased out...