Your Teacher... Robin Williams
My students tell me that I can be quite funny sometimes. But many of the concepts that I must teach you are complicated, abstract, and...yes... boring. This is not a reason to avoid learning them. Many essential skills aren't that interesting to learn. For example, if you play the guitar or piano, you had to go through a boring stage of learning chords or scales. If you are an athlete, I'm sure there were times you had to force yourself to work out, stick with your training regimen, or jog that extra quarter-mile. Your education and future career are at least equally as important as your physical fitness and leisure-time activities. You will need to acquire the maturity, patience, and persistence to keep your interest going even when the lectures get boring. Trust me, I won't try to make you learn anything you don't need to know in order to make a good salary when you leave John Abbott. This isn't high school, where you had to read Shakespeare and do math equations even though you couldn't see how these things could possibly be useful in your life. Because I used to be an office manager, I have a pretty good idea of the business and web design skills that can earn you real money.
The Spiral Teaching Method
Once I teach something, I try to return to it again. That's called the ‘spiral teaching method'. This way, you can practice something a year or so later and you won't forget about it by the time you graduate. The second time we do something, I usually go into it a bit deeper and in more detail. But there are so many things to cover, especially in word processing, that I can't always return to a topic after I teach it. This doesn't mean that your boss on stage or at work won't expect you to know it perfectly! You will be expected to know these things, particularly if you want to earn a promotion. So it will be up to you to remember what you have covered in each class and practice the functions and skills that you have learned. You will need to do this practicing on your own, over the summer holidays or at other times. It's not realistic to think that you will remember your HTML tags from third semester perfectly when you graduate. You will need to find an opportunity to practice and keep your skill levels up.
But I'm Not a Secretary!
Typing is not an old-fashioned skill. As a writer, I compose directly onto the screen and I can type as fast as I think. This isn't to say that I think really slow, either! If you think that you can leave PDHT with a typing speed of less than 40wpm and do well at work, you are kidding yourself. Even technicians and web masters have to respond to e-mail quickly. You can't take all morning to type three or four e-mail responses! "Chatting" on the internet is a good way to increase your typing speed. And, since you have to take a typing course anyway, why not work on your touch typing? Why not use the right fingers? No one can force you to do this, but I guarantee that you can type much faster if you do. One of the best ways to increase your speed is simply to type anything (from a magazine, the newspaper, a novel) for 10 minutes a day. Don't correct your errors—who cares! Just go as fast as you can and let yourself make mistakes without worrying about it. As unscientific as this sounds, your speed will increase if you force yourself to go fast and not worry about making mistakes. You can always slow down later and go for control and accuracy.
©Susan Regan, Ph.D. May 1998