Welcome to the second edition of Clutter Tales, a series where we tell the stories of our lives through our clutter. In the first edition, I travelled back in time to the mid to late 1990s and reminisced about the days when we needed a book to teach us how to use the Internet. Today’s clutter find takes me back even further to high school typing class and shorthand class.

As I was decluttering books, I found my Grade 11 Shorthand textbook. I’m not sure why I had it since we were supposed to turn in all our textbooks at the end of each school year. For some reason, I hung on to this one and I still have it 40 years later.

Just leafing through the pages of this book took me back to the days when women were secretaries and men were bosses.

Let’s look back…

What is shorthand anyway?

Some of my younger readers may be wondering what shorthand is. That’s a very good question since it’s a skill that is no longer used in the modern world.

Have you ever watched an old movie where the boss says to his secretary “Take a letter”? Then the secretary sits down with a pencil and a steno notepad while the boss dictates the letter.

Well, that secretary wasn’t a speed writer. She would have been writing her boss’s words in shorthand so that she could later sit down at her typewriter and type up the letter.

There were different kinds of shorthand. The one I learned was called Pitman Shorterhand. It used symbols to represent phonetic sounds. When you write in Pitman Shorterhand, your page looks something like this.

Something to fall back on

So why would anyone take such a class?

When I was in high school, all girls were encouraged to take typing, and even shorthand, classes. The thinking was that, if all else fails, you’d always have a job if you had decent typing skills.

So along with my other, more academic, classes, I took typing class all four years in high school. In grades 11 and 12, I added shorthand class to the mix. Here’s my grade 12 timetable that I found tucked away inside my yearbook.

Memories of high school typing class

We first learned to type on manual typewriters.

But, the typewriters we learned on didn’t have letters on the keys. That was to teach us “touch typing” – the skill of typing without looking at our fingers.

In grade 9 typing class, we learned letter-by-letter. We literally spent weeks on the home row, typing A S D F J K L ; over and over before we were allowed to venture to other exciting letters like Q, Z or even E. We used to type to music to improve our rhythm and speed.

When we got to higher grades, we were introduced to electric typewriters. That was exciting!

My worst memories of typing class were the typing erasers. When we made a mistake, we had to erase the word or letter using a special eraser. So many times, I would rub a hole in my paper with the eraser and then have to start my letter all over again. Oh, the pain! When that happened, many a tear was shed, and the odd swearword was uttered.

But help was on the way. First came liquid paper. Now, if you’ve ever corrected something with liquid paper, you know it leaves a big, ugly blob on your page so it was still pretty obvious you were incompetent, especially when you held your paper up to the light. A huge advancement was the arrival of the IBM Selectric – an electric typewriter with a self-correcting ribbon. It let you go back and type over your mistakes and the offending letters would disappear from the page. Magic!

Finally, in grade 11, a newfangled thing called a word processor found its way into our classroom. These were the days before PCs so this primitive word processor looked like a big typewriter but it had a small LED display that let you see what you were typing and easily go back and correct mistakes before they made it on to the paper. The dreaded typing eraser was about to become obsolete!

But, shorthand – really?

When I think back now, I’m not sure why I even took shorthand. Even in those days, Dictaphones were becoming more popular. The days of the secretary sitting in her boss’s office writing in shorthand on a steno pad were coming to an end.

So, I spent two years learning a skill I would never use again. But, I got really good marks that helped boost my average so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Our teacher was a tough taskmaster

By far, my biggest memories of high school typing class and shorthand class are of my teacher. I was in her class for typing and shorthand in both grades 11 and 12. Mrs. Kolenc was a very strict, Russian lady. Actually, I’m not sure she even was Russian, but we convinced ourselves she was a Russian spy sent to report back on Canadian teenagers. I have to admit we were all a little bit (or a lot, depending on the day) afraid of her. She ran a tight ship and there was no room for tom-foolery in her class. This was serious business!

Looking back, Mrs. Kolenc taught us lessons that extended far beyond the typing and shorthand we were there to learn. She taught us skills and qualities we would need to do well in the working world. From showing up on time, to avoiding the serious crime of chewing gum in the office, to knowing how short a skirt is too short to wear in the office. We left her classroom knowing how to conduct ourselves. We were ready for office life!

The skills I learned in Mrs. Kolenc’s class were invaluable. I wish I could go back and thank her for everything she taught me.

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Thanks to high school typing class, I’ve always had a job

By the end of grade 12, I could type 60 words per minute, and take shorthand dictation at a speed of 120 words per minute. We earned certificates based on our speed and accuracy tests. There was even a Secretarial Award that I was proud to win in Grade 11.

More importantly, the promise turned out to be true. I’ve always had a job. My typing skills opened the door to the business world for me. And, nearly 40 years later, I can look back on a successful career that all started in Mrs. Kolenc’s classroom.

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I hope you enjoyed this installment of Clutter Tales. If you’d like to write a guest post for Clutter Tales, please get in touch. I’d love to give you the opportunity to properly thank your clutter by sharing its story too!

Is there a course you took in school that’s no longer taught in schools? Tell us about it below.