Ugh, while I’m glad I got to see the world before computers were everywhere, I don’t envy people who had to handwrite all their papers, nor teachers who had to grade those reports.
Were typewriters cheap enough that most students had them, or did they have “typing rooms” the same way schools set up computer labs? Or was handwriting just the norm even after typewriters were ubiquitous? Maybe in HS it was common but surely college profs couldn’t be fucked with handwriting for the most part?
I had to do some tests in those little blue essay booklets. My hand would be absolutely killing me from cranking out pages of handwriting as fast as possible.
Typewriters were pretty cheap but not very many people owned one. Colleges had typewriter labs sometimes, but it was more common to hand-write your papers and then have a professional typist type them up. I went to college in the '80s and we had labs with a bunch of word processors we could use, but I had borrowed my dad’s portable electric typewriter and I mostly used that. During my junior year the G type slug broke off of its typebar, so for the rest of my college career I had to hand-write the Gs on all my papers.
I got my degree in 2008. All my exams were handwritten (but fortunately I didn’t have to write 10 pages per question, which is good as I physically can’t write that much in the time allotted). I did at least get to type my undergraduate thesis.
I got mine 10 years later and it was the same. We had to type out papers and projects, but exams were handwritten. Being an engineering major certainly lent itself to that as typing out your work in a math problem sucks, especially when it includes diagrams. But humanities exams were also predominantly pen and paper, often using standardized essay booklets that were provided by the proctor.
I think that that’s the best way to handle it. It can be properly supervised for cheating and minimizes distractions. Also, holy crap I’d hate to take a statics or dynamics or calc exam on a computer
I only had to handwrite for a 1st year class that was big enough to be a lecture. I think the exam probably required less than ~8 paragraphs total but that was enough. My school was pretty small so fortunately all the rest of my humanities classes were seminars we turned in reports for. I would’ve hated having to do those style exams for my entire degree, even without the handwriting issue.
I don’t think I’ve written anything longer than a couple paragraphs by hand at one time in the past 30 years. I’ll still take some notes here and there and I’ve been known to send a postcard or two if I’m traveling, but typing is so much faster anyway.
10 pages hand written in cursive in 1982.
Until my left hand become a filthy mess of pen ink or pencil carbon.
Ugh, while I’m glad I got to see the world before computers were everywhere, I don’t envy people who had to handwrite all their papers, nor teachers who had to grade those reports.
Were typewriters cheap enough that most students had them, or did they have “typing rooms” the same way schools set up computer labs? Or was handwriting just the norm even after typewriters were ubiquitous? Maybe in HS it was common but surely college profs couldn’t be fucked with handwriting for the most part?
I had to do some tests in those little blue essay booklets. My hand would be absolutely killing me from cranking out pages of handwriting as fast as possible.
Typewriters were pretty cheap but not very many people owned one. Colleges had typewriter labs sometimes, but it was more common to hand-write your papers and then have a professional typist type them up. I went to college in the '80s and we had labs with a bunch of word processors we could use, but I had borrowed my dad’s portable electric typewriter and I mostly used that. During my junior year the G type slug broke off of its typebar, so for the rest of my college career I had to hand-write the Gs on all my papers.
I got my degree in 2008. All my exams were handwritten (but fortunately I didn’t have to write 10 pages per question, which is good as I physically can’t write that much in the time allotted). I did at least get to type my undergraduate thesis.
I got mine 10 years later and it was the same. We had to type out papers and projects, but exams were handwritten. Being an engineering major certainly lent itself to that as typing out your work in a math problem sucks, especially when it includes diagrams. But humanities exams were also predominantly pen and paper, often using standardized essay booklets that were provided by the proctor.
I think that that’s the best way to handle it. It can be properly supervised for cheating and minimizes distractions. Also, holy crap I’d hate to take a statics or dynamics or calc exam on a computer
I only had to handwrite for a 1st year class that was big enough to be a lecture. I think the exam probably required less than ~8 paragraphs total but that was enough. My school was pretty small so fortunately all the rest of my humanities classes were seminars we turned in reports for. I would’ve hated having to do those style exams for my entire degree, even without the handwriting issue.
I don’t think I’ve written anything longer than a couple paragraphs by hand at one time in the past 30 years. I’ll still take some notes here and there and I’ve been known to send a postcard or two if I’m traveling, but typing is so much faster anyway.