When I was in high school, I took all the business classes and was pretty good at short hand and typed 85 or 90 words a minute. When you were typing on an old Royal electric or just a plain manual typewriter, that was pretty darn good.
Well I graduated at 18 and was not the most confident teenager in the world, but knew it was time to either get a job, go to college or get married. Since John had not come along at that time, I had to opt for the first two. I took my ACT test but didn't feel that I did as well as I should so I never went back to get my score.
My Dad insisted that I go over to the TVA employment office and take their secretarial test. I went because if Daddy told me to jump my only question was "how high?. Well I got there and the room was was full of women of all ages hopeful of landing a job with TVA. I could feel the tension rising from my stomach, up into my throat, my palms were sweating and when I looked down my hands were shaking visiblely. We all took a seat in front of a type writer, got our paper inserted and waited for the instructor to give us directions. In the mean time I am about to get sick from the tension. The instructor tells us what we are supposed to do and that the test will last for five minute and we will be graded on the number of words we get right per minute.
She set the timer and says now start. I start typing and glance down after the first few words, everything is going great. I start to relax and the tension is lessening in my shoulders, my head starts to clear and I think, why was I so afraid. I continue typing like a demon, my fingers are literally flying across the keyboard. The bell goes off indicating that the test is over and I breath a sigh of relief. Then I look down at my paper and this is what I see.
Hjejug eh ui g s joo jdui ut iijk jxxxoj mmm enthh toi toelll oih nkw.n jtnnmi ieht mem ii eiuio lemt ml elk mremjjw. o sm divj s nui O vsmy nr;ofbr yjomd Gr ylr hommr frmloyn dn okk ekrt
After the first line where I glanced up to see if I was doing OK, I got my fingers in the wrong position, and the rest of the five minutes I didn't hit a single right key. Well being the naive person that I was, instead of taking the paper, folding it and putting it in my purse, I did like the instructor said and put my name in the right hand corner and left it on my desk. I can't even imagine the laugh that those people got out of my typing test. I figure that somewhere, on some wall, in some personel office still hangs my infamous TVA typing test.
Needless to say I did not pursue a career in office management.
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