Flashback Friday

I was getting ready to submit this week's assignment for school earlier when I took a moment to re-read over the assignment. Only then did I realize that I stupidly glossed over it and didn't pay any attention to the last half of the assignment instructions. Had I not paid attention, I'm pretty sure major points would have been taken off. I did some research and typed up the rest of the assignment and submitted it, and as I was thinking about my near-mistake, I thought about how it was back in the day when we had to type research papers, or any type of assignment. If you leave something out today, it's not big deal - you just open up the Word document and then insert your information. But back in the day, it was a whole different story. You had to start over from scratch.

There was no such thing as having the information saved. You just started over and used your typed pages as a guide and just typed it all in again, inserting the new paragraphs or pages where they belonged. And you used an actual typewriter, not a computer. And it was a pain in the ass.

When I had to do research papers, I became OCD and made damned sure that my handwritten pages were exactly like I wanted them before I started typing them on the trusty Smith Corona typewriter. When you made a mistake, there was no white-out to use, either; you had one of those typewriter erasers with the rubber eraser on one end and a little stiff brush on the other. That was then I learned to be as accurate as possible when typing. Now, it's no big deal - we just backspace and delete what we've typed and type over.

And now, from what I've heard from reliable sources, actully researching, writing and typing in a paper is uncommon; there's countless websites where students can go and buy a paper on pretty much any topic. But they'll never be able to experience the angst of typing a research paper, and having to use the aforementioned typewriter eraser on a mistake, only to get a bit too anxious and end up erasing a hole in the paper and having to type it over.