I've been proofreading the same documents for almost ten years. Reports in business style and academic style, memos, chart notes, letters, tables... over and over and over. Every few terms, I catch a break from the scheduling gods, and I'm excused from the keyboarding drudgery. Next term, I hear, I might get lucky. The trade-off is that I may end up with a new class, an introductory computer class for medical students who are notoriously computer illiterate (and sadly unconcerned about it). I hear there are three sections. With a lot of students in each. So I hear.
The term is winding down, two weeks to go. Teachers are going through reviews. Today I sat in a computer lab listening to a keyboarding instructor walk his students through the review for the keyboarding final.
“What fingers do you use to type the number four?” he asked in a slow voice, like they were third graders.
“R4 L1!” they shouted.
“Very good, class. And what fingers do you use to type the number six?”
“R4 L1!” they shouted again. No, I thought, that is not what the software teaches us. I almost interrupted. I put my hand over my mouth. Before I stick my foot in it, I must have evidence! I signed myself into his computer class (let him puzzle over who this new student is, two weeks before the end of the term). I poked around the lessons until I found what I sought. Lesson 14. Yes! I knew it. It's L4 R1!
By then he'd moved on. All the answers were written on the whiteboard, all copied dutifully into students' notes. Would I really consider undermining his authority by pointing out to him that he is teaching them wrong information?
Well, what does wrong mean when it comes to typing, I ask you. It's not like this is a medical terminology class and he taught them salpingo-oophaboomboom instead of salpingo-oophorectomy. My father typed with his two index fingers on a manual Underwood with sticky keys. He wasn't graded down by his superior officer, as far as I know. He retired early, a happy man, and spent more than 20 years never worrying about typing again. I've seen students type 70 words a minute with two fingers—I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I've seen a person with one hand type faster than most people type with two. When it comes to typing, I guess the lesson to be learned is.... who the hell cares what fingers you use? Let's just be grateful we have fingers, if we do, and let it go with that.
Every time I grade keyboarding I am reminded of how much I hate grading keyboarding. I know I could just let it go, do less, give them less feedback, demand less, expect less (if that is possible), but my sense of integrity rears its weary head. No, can't give less than... oh, about 96%, I'd say. I used to give 110% but after ten years, I just don't have it left to give. Not for keyboarding, not for anything, anymore. I've got a classic case of teacher burnout. It's like athlete's foot. Or a yeast infection. It burns, it itches, and it doesn't go away.
