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Thursday, August 26, 2004

how NOT to type

I am attempting to re-teach myself to type. I did take a typing class for about a week in high school. However, since I'd already taught myself to type by that time, I quickly reached the point where the very sound of the teacher's monotone droning on ("A!" [Class hits the A key on every. single. typewriter: CL-CL-CLACK.] "S!" [CL-CLACK.] "D!" [CLACK.] "F!" [CL-CLACK.]) was enough to make me want to poke someone's eyes out. Even my own. So I'd sit there ignoring the teacher, typing letters to my friends on the scratch paper. It's hard to keep from getting caught when you're writing notes this way, and teachers have this weird thing about students, you know, paying attention in class instead of typing friendly correspondence. Go figure. I quickly realized that if I continued in that class, I'd end up either killing someone or spending the rest of my natural life in detention (or both). So I dropped it and took home economics instead. So to this day, I always level when I measure, but I type in a very unhealthy manner. Fast, yes. But my form lacks. It lacks... a lot. I only ever use my left pinky for Shift. I stretch my fingers all around the wrong way, mostly on my left hand. I knew this but didn't care until I started this ongoing data entry project, involving lots of tabbing and even more shifting, really repetitively. When the pain from the pinky and ring fingers on my left hand reached that elbow, I thought, hey, it's never too late to retrain oneself and undo habits that have been set in concrete by, oh, say, fifteen years of rigorous exercise, right? Hence this entry is being typed Correctly. Oops. I just used the wrong pinky for Shift again. It is making me crazy and I'm beginning to place bets against myself regarding how long it will be before I give up and lapse back into the old incorrect-but-thought-free Rachel's Patented Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Guaranteed Typing System. I'm thinking... about five more words. Yep.

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