Laptop Computer vs IBM Selectric

The other night, one of our college kids came home for dinner. It was great hearing about her days: new friends, how her classes are going, studying at the local coffee shop...

"I used to do that," I said. "I would study at the Hardee's across the street from my dorm." The thought of me at sitting at the hamburger place brought out the humor in everyone. "So, did you take your typewriter with you?" she asked in a mocking tone.

At that moment, it hit me again how LONG it has been since I went to college and how things have changed!

You see, I had an IBM Selectric typewriter and it was the nicest typewriter in our dorm. It was a professional office-type machine with several font balls including italics and it erased! It was huge, took up my entire desk, weighed a ton and was the envy of all around. Those of you my age are probably sitting there with your mouths hanging open thinking, "Wow! That was a great typewriter!" These were the same typewriters used in our journalism writing classes.

Just before my freshman year, my dad's office was downsizing. (Yes, they did that in the late 70s and early 80s, too.) They had fewer secretaries (yes "secretaries," not "assistants") and the company was selling some of the office equipment. My dad bought the typewriter for me. What a great dad!

It's a totally different writing process when you have to re-type your paper over and over again because you changed your mind. And your typing skills get pretty precise when you can't just go back to the first paragraph and fix all of your misspelled words. And -- this was something I was VERY proud of -- I could spell! There was no spell check -- just me, my brain and a dictionary.

We took notes in class by hand and we actually studied our notes! If you needed a reference, you walked to the library to look in a book.

So, as I sit here on my deck in the beautiful sunshine typing this blog posting on my laptop computer, rewriting the first paragraph over and over again on a whim, getting ready to send it out to the world via the Internet, I think about how far we have come. The Selectric typewriter is gone, but then again, so is that Hardee's.
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One of my best college memories is of my news reporting class. One of Professor Lambert's favorite sayings was, "Journalism informs minds, public relations twists minds."

Finals for this class was "speed week." We would be required to type a certain number of news stories in just 2 hours from the information the professor provided. We would type the first story, proof our sheet of paper and make editing corrections on it, hand in the paper, and would then be handed our next story "assignment," just like working in a real news room. Points were taken off for misspellings, etc., but if you spelled someone's name wrong it was an automatic F.

Sometimes I still think, those were the days!