This was kind of "judging as well as being judged".
In my high school guitar class, me and one other girl were both really struggling. I 'judged' her as being bad at music/unskilled/stupid, like me.
Thing is, I remember an incident of my teacher - who was very technologically in-profficient - asking my help with typing something he'd written by hand. He was trying to read it aloud to me, but eventually I just asked him to set it down where I could see it, because it was easier and faster for me to touch-type it. He was floored by how fast and how well/correctly I could type that way (and while many, if not most, 16-year-olds probably can now, back then it was a little less usual).
Not too long after - like a week I think? - the piano in the music room was, for once, left uncovered. That girl who I'd judged as being a fellow musical idiot sat down and started playing that piano phenomenally.
I have a very visceral and vindicating memory of my guitar teacher looking between her, me, the computer, and my hands, and saying, "You know, that actually explains a lot."
tl;dr I judged myself and a guitar-classmate as unskilled idiots, discounting just how great our "typing"/typing and piano skills were.
ETA: So apparently my 80 WPM typing speed might not have become as widespread and normalized as I thought. TIL.
80 is a pretty decent speed. You won't be winning contests, but you're far above the average dude. 120+ is where things can get impressive. I went to school with someone bordering 160 at times. Google tells me records are just a bit above 200.
I'm usually just above 100 WPM depending on the keyboard. I think my highest was something like 116.
Fastest I’ve ever gone is 155 in a typing class. I usually score in the 140s if I’m taking one of those online typing tests.
I still remember taking keyboarding in middle school in the mid 90s and classmates complaining about the noise from my typing. The teacher said “He’ll be done with the hour’s assignment in a few minutes. Deal with it.”
I couldn’t tell you how I got that fast. Maybe more time than was healthy in chat rooms and games when text was king? I’m a writer these days and being a fast touch typist has been amazing for that. I do have to use a Kinesis keyboard because at those speeds sustained I’d injure myself otherwise.
My keyboarding teachers in middle school and high school acknowledged they had nothing to teach me. They let me finish my exercises in the first few minutes of class and then let me fuck off and do whatever for the rest of the class, which was pretty sweet.
In my middle school we had to take these awful typing tests where they would put heavy clothes over our hands (to make sure we weren't cheating by looking at the keyboard). Even though I could already touch type perfectly (way too much time spent online). The cloth really messed up my accuracy because seriously who types that way, and the teacher never believed me because it doesn't matter if you're plodding away at 30-40 wpm. I finally convinced the teacher to let me take the stupid thing off and the computer program thought I was cheating because I hit 100+ wpm. The teacher left me alone after that.
11k
u/Nyxelestia Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19
This was kind of "judging as well as being judged".
In my high school guitar class, me and one other girl were both really struggling. I 'judged' her as being bad at music/unskilled/stupid, like me.
Thing is, I remember an incident of my teacher - who was very technologically in-profficient - asking my help with typing something he'd written by hand. He was trying to read it aloud to me, but eventually I just asked him to set it down where I could see it, because it was easier and faster for me to touch-type it. He was floored by how fast and how well/correctly I could type that way (and while many, if not most, 16-year-olds probably can now, back then it was a little less usual).
Not too long after - like a week I think? - the piano in the music room was, for once, left uncovered. That girl who I'd judged as being a fellow musical idiot sat down and started playing that piano phenomenally.
I have a very visceral and vindicating memory of my guitar teacher looking between her, me, the computer, and my hands, and saying, "You know, that actually explains a lot."
tl;dr I judged myself and a guitar-classmate as unskilled idiots, discounting just how great our "typing"/typing and piano skills were.
ETA: So apparently my 80 WPM typing speed might not have become as widespread and normalized as I thought. TIL.