Thursday, April 28, 2011

On the passing of eras II

Yesterday was what used to be known as Secretaries Day. I'm not sure what they call it now, an attempt to acknowledge the efforts of executives' assistants, but the fact is, the profession that used to be known as Secretary no longer exists.

Now I'm not going to rant against technological displacement or anything like that. I'm deeply thankful that computers and e-mail have erased the need to sit in front of some man's desk taking dictation, in shorthand, for hours on end. Although, I might be the only person I know who still knows shorthand. And I still use it.

Nearly thirty years ago, I started working for Judi Adam, then Executive Director of Portland Concert Association. I was her Assistant at that time, and a few weeks after I started, she was dictating a list of things for me to do, and without thinking about it, I was writing it down in shorthand. Second nature to me. She stopped in mid-sentence, stood in front of my desk, and declared, "You didn't tell me you took shorthand." My response: "You didn't ask." That still makes me laugh.

For some unknown reason, yesterday, perhaps because it was "Secretary's Day," I Googled Katharine Gibbs School, the pre-eminent secretarial school of my day where I learned, in addition to shorthand, how to type fast, how to be the grammar queen of whatever office I worked in, and how to be a really good secretary. To my chagrin, I learned that it no longer exists. "Katharine Gibbs School has closed," said the web page. I wasn't surprised, just sad that an era, indeed, a whole profession, had passed.

To graduate from Katy Gibbs, you had to be able to type at least 65 words a minute and to take Shorthand at 100 words a minute, which was passing at Gibbs. 140 was an A. The word around school during the summer of 1969 when I was trying to get up to speed, was that Walter Cronkite delivered the CBS Evening News at a steady 140 words a minute. We would gather around the television at 6:30 every evening with our steno pads and pens ready and work feverishly for thirty minutes. When I was able to take down every word for two nights in a row, I started to pack my bags. The next morning I went in to Shorthand class, asked to take my timed test, and got an A. And left New York the next day.

What I learned at Katy Gibbs got me started. Later, as barriers fell and more and more careers opened up to women, being a "secretary" lost its professional luster. But, as I said, it got me started.

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