Inspired by work force thread - school life before computers

[Pea-n-Me]

Who remembers doing school work before computers, or even word processors, were widely available?

I remember painstakingly handwriting my papers on legal pads (DH still laughs about the sheer number of pads I had and the scribbly messes they contained). When I was done, I'd re-write them neatly and drop off to my "typist", who charged me $3 per page. There were times I was running them to her the night before, picking them up in the morning, then running to class and handing them in, lol.

Tell us what it was like for you!

 

[claudia]

I remember doing math before there were calculators.....

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I remember doing math before there were calculators.....

So do I!

 

[apirateslifeforme]

Even 15 years ago when I was in college, not everyone had a computer. I had done all of my papers on a typewriter (non-correctable, no less!). Well, part of the requirement for my major at my school was to keep a portfolio of your work. Each student had an advisor who would take the graded work and keep it in a file. You could not graduate without this portfolio. Unfortunately, about a month before graduation, my advisor - to whom I'd given work about once a month - let me know that my portfolio was incomplete and I should see her immediately. I did...and she did realize that yes, I'd regularly been giving her papers over the previous 3 years, but she couldn't find it. Then she said, "I need something here - can't you just reprint them from your computer?" The look on her face when I told her that I didn't own a computer was priceless! Needless to say, she gave me complete credit for the portfolio, since she was the one who misplaced it.

Come to think of it...even in those days, we didn't have computers in the library at school. All of those papers; I'd done the research by looking for books in the card catalogue!

 

[NotUrsula]

When I was done, I'd re-write them neatly and drop off to my "typist", who charged me $3 per page.

Ah, yes, the lost profession of being a student typist. My sister used to do that, but there are very few people now who would use that service.

I typed my own starting in about 7th grade, and I still own a typewriter. It comes in handy for making single labels. I used my first word-processor (Word Perfect for DOS) back in 1984, on an IBM portable computer that looked like this:

That computer belonged to my cousin, who bought it for her business, and she hired me to compile mail lists for her and let me use it to do so. The bonus was that I also got to use it for my grad-school papers. (My apt. was once broken into while I was out of town overnight, and luckily, the thieves apparently had no idea that that was a computer -- they left it sitting right there on my desk. It was brand-new, and worth $5K!)

What I remember from college is the inevitable midnight Kinko's run when you had a paper to turn in. That was the only way to get an extra copy without having to type the entire thing over again. Also, thank God for the self-correcting typewriter -- I was *so* happy when I could ditch the omnipresent supply of Liquid Paper (which never lasted more than a week without getting hopelessly gloppy.)

PS: About those library catalog cards -- we got them pre-printed from a service, but if the headings changed, we had to manually correct them. We used electric erasers for that, then typed each corrected heading on a typewriter with a card-slot platen. We thought we had died and gone to heaven when Avery came out with single-line stickers that we could use with a dot-matrix printer to make those changes instead. My college had a HUGE collection on Lincoln, and you would not believe how many man-hours it took us to change all of the cards from "Lincoln, Abraham, Pres. U.S., 1809-1865." to "Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865." The project took upward of three months with several students working on it every day. It seemed like a miracle when we got an electronic catalog and could do such a change overnight just by running a program.

 

[Pakey]

I taught myself to type before there were even electric typewriters. I wish I still had that old typewriter; it would be an antique. In college, I had an old IBM selectric typewriter that I used for all of my papers (and took in typing jobs for extra money).

No computers or calculators in college either. I have an accounting degree; it all had to be done manually back then.

I had a young accountant on my staff once, when asked why she recorded something the way she did, told me because that's the way the computer did it. Ahhhh, in the old days, we actually knew how the transactions worked.

 

[Carly_Roach]

Ah, yes, the lost profession of being a student typist. My sister used to do that, but there are very few people now who would use that service.

I typed my own starting in about 7th grade, and I still own a typewriter. It comes in handy for making single labels. I used my first word-processor (Word Perfect for DOS) back in 1984, on an IBM portable computer that looked like this:

That computer belonged to my cousin, who bought it for her business, and she hired me to compile mail lists for her and let me use it to do so. The bonus was that I also got to use it for my grad-school papers. (My apt. was once broken into while I was out of town overnight, and luckily, the thieves apparently had no idea that that was a computer -- they left it sitting right there on my desk. It was brand-new, and worth $5K!)

What I remember from college is the inevitable midnight Kinko's run when you had a paper to turn in. That was the only way to get an extra copy without having to type the entire thing over again. Also, thank God for the self-correcting typewriter -- I was *so* happy when I could ditch the omnipresent supply of Liquid Paper (which never lasted more than a week without getting hopelessly gloppy.)

OMG! Now there's a blast from the past! I remember using one of those! With a big ol' floppy when "floppy" actually meant that it was floppy.

Ditto on running to Kinko's for copies so I wouldn't have to retype everything.

I remember having an IBM Selectric with two...count 'em...TWO! font balls! Size 12 and size 10. And having to first use liquid paper for mistakes, then those correcting strips that we kept in little claspy boxes, then, finally, the correcting tape.

Since this is about school life, however, the library was your friend! All the encyclopedias you'd ever want. But you had to work during library hours, not whenever you wanted to.

 

[puffkin]

I graduated high school in 1998 and we didn't get a home computer until 1996. We were about the mid point in my area....at that time half the class had home computers, half didn't. I would right out all my papers by hand and my mom would take them into work and type them up on her lunch break. She is a legal secretary so it didn't take her long at all I just needed to have things done a day early so she could get it typed.

When I was in college, only about 1/2 my dorm had computers in our rooms. I was one of the lucky ones and it was a lifesaver! The labs were always packed.

 

[NotUrsula]

I remember having an IBM Selectric with two...count 'em...TWO! font balls! Size 12 and size 10.

LOL! DH was a typesetter in a former life, and he went slap-happy with the font balls. The Selectric we still have at home has TWELVE of them! We have Italics, 16-point Bulletin Font and a bunch of others. I recently explained the whole setup to DS12 -- he was HORRIFIED!

DH bought his first desktop computer in 1984, when he started grad school. He bought it via mail-order, and he saved the ad. Among other features, it had a 20MB hard drive, prominantly noted in the ad as
"ALL THE MEMORY YOU WILL EVER NEED!!"

 

[smschex]

I had a Smith Corona with ribbon cartridges you could pop in and out for different colors and for the all important correction tape. What a step up from the little round eraser with stiff bristles on the other end!

 

[Pixiedust34]

In junior high, I learned how to type on a manual typerwriter and my fingers kept falling between the keys.

In high school and college, I used an electric typewriter for all of my formal papers. I cringed every time I made a mistake and went through a lot of white out goo. I also hated trying to figure out how much space to leave at the end of the page for footnotes.

All of the books in the library were listed in the card catalog and you had to physically check the shelf to see if the book was there. We also read old newspapers on microfilm while doing research. There was no Google or quick way to find information. We had to dig for information.

I'm 41 and after typing this I feel older than dirt.

I did use the computer lab now and then back in college but it was more for playing around and learning how to use a computer (I remember having to type commands of some sort and keeping work on a floppy disk) than it was to use as a tool to write a paper because everyone's desk had an electric typewriter for that purpose.

 

[NMAmy]

Ah, yes, we like to tell the young 'uns at work about the olden days when we used typewriters and carbon paper and ditto machines. I still have one professor who will ask if I can have someone make dittos for him.

We do still have a typewriter in our office that we use occasionally and it's always fun when we get a new student employee and I have to teach them how to use it.

Ah--just thought of this, as well. Remember when computers didn't have a mouse and everything had to be done with a combination of function keys and control keys? Some of the younger ones in our office are amazed by CTRL-C and CTRL-V.

 

[smkiya]

I'm 33 and I had to use an electric typewriter until 10th grade when I got a word processor for Christmas! I just remembered the sound the typewriter made when I turned it on. Memories...

I remember in 1994 when I went away to college, chat rooms were making their debut, and the computer lab was always PACKED!.

 

[apirateslifeforme]

I'm 33 and I had to use an electric typewriter until 10th grade when I got a word processor for Christmas! I just remembered the sound the typewriter made when I turned it on. Memories...

I remember in 1994 when I went away to college, chat rooms were making their debut, and the computer lab was always PACKED!.

Now that you mention it, I remember the smell. Was it just mine that had this weird warm inky scent to it?

And now that I think about it as well...MIMEOGRAPHS!!! Before the Xerox machine...when I was in school, it was an honor for the teacher to choose you to assist in making mimeographs. You'd go to the mimeograph closet and have to put ink in the machine, attach the original paper to the roller, then hand-crank the thing. They were in purple ink! And when you got back to class with those nice warm copies and handed them out, it was required to sniff it...

 

[Tinijocaro]

Started on manual typewriters, then electric. All I remember about computers was very few students would walk around with stacks of these computer cards with holes punched in them. Didn't really get what they were.

Another dinosaur is MICROFICHE!!

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I actually took Typing (now known as "Keyboarding", which, when my kids mentioned that to me I thought they were taking music ) in high school and again for college prep, but I wasn't good enough at it to not make a ton of mistakes on paper with a typewriter. I figured it took enough effort just to write the paper, I wasn't gonna stress out about typing it even though it cost me a small fortune back then having someone else type it for me! [Thank you, Anita, wherever you are! ]

My DH went to college as an adult in the 90's and we bought our first Brother Word Processor. I couldn't believe how easy it was to type his papers for him - I was like, "Boy, I wish I had one of these babies when I was in college!"

 

[golfgal]

LOL! DH was a typesetter in a former life, and he went slap-happy with the font balls. The Selectric we still have at home has TWELVE of them! We have Italics, 16-point Bulletin Font and a bunch of others. I recently explained the whole setup to DS12 -- he was HORRIFIED!

DH bought his first desktop computer in 1984, when he started grad school. He bought it via mail-order, and he saved the ad. Among other features, it had a 20MB hard drive, prominantly noted in the ad as
"ALL THE MEMORY YOU WILL EVER NEED!!"

We were thrilled when the school got typewriters that you could backspace/erase 20 characters--THEN we discovered erasable typing paper--the best thing EVER invented (up until the PC anyway).

Now that you mention it, I remember the smell. Was it just mine that had this weird warm inky scent to it?

And now that I think about it as well...MIMEOGRAPHS!!! Before the Xerox machine...when I was in school, it was an honor for the teacher to choose you to assist in making mimeographs. You'd go to the mimeograph closet and have to put ink in the machine, attach the original paper to the roller, then hand-crank the thing. They were in purple ink! And when you got back to class with those nice warm copies and handed them out, it was required to sniff it...

We were just talking about the smell of the mimeograph papers at Christmas . We had them when I started teaching. Needless to say, we all had great looking upper arms from the workout cranking out those sheets for 160 kids .

 

[Pakey]

This is better than talking about menopause.

 

[JodyLynC]

Now that you mention it, I remember the smell. Was it just mine that had this weird warm inky scent to it?

And now that I think about it as well...MIMEOGRAPHS!!! Before the Xerox machine...when I was in school, it was an honor for the teacher to choose you to assist in making mimeographs. You'd go to the mimeograph closet and have to put ink in the machine, attach the original paper to the roller, then hand-crank the thing. They were in purple ink! And when you got back to class with those nice warm copies and handed them out, it was required to sniff it...

When the teacher came back with fresh mimeographed sheets, every child would be deeply inhaling the paper as it was handed to him/her.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

I graduated from college in 1987 as a PR major. In my Journalism and PR classes, we had to write an entire news story or press release during every class period. We sat in front of electric typewriters and had to use white-out when we made mistakes.

Since I had so many papers to write, my dad bought me an electronic typewriter. I could input about a page and a half before the memory was full. I would edit using a little screen that showed a sentence at a time. Then I would print it out, erase the memory and keep writing. I sometimes had 10-page papers to write and this process would take a while. I also had to be really sure about what I was writing before I erased it because I couldn't go back and make changes.

Research had to be done in the library because we didn't have Internet. I often wonder how much easier college would have been if I did it today!