Antique Secretary

I was offered a part-time job in the school office in the early sixties during my senior year of high school. This job was being a secretary to the Superintendent of Schools.  Then when I graduated I was offered this same job full-time.

Looking back I feel like I didn’t do my best work in this position.  First getting a job in the school office at the place where I attended school, didn’t allow me to grow up in the working field.  It felt like I never left school.  I didn’t feel like I was doing real work.  This prevented me from having a grown-up work experience.  I still felt and probably acted more like a school kid, not someone who should be a grown-up doing a grown-up job.

I don’t remember having any actual training for this job.  I was told what was expected of me and to just do it.  Looking back I felt very dumb and out of my element.  I was never shown exactly what it was I was to do.  I remember it had something to do with scheduling the sports activities as well as a lot of other jobs.  Again, I was clueless.

I worked until August after graduation and then went to the law office to work.  The lawyer that I eventually worked for actually called my employer and said he wanted me to work for him because he had lost his secretary. 

One thing I find interesting today is how technology has changed.  When we made copies in the school office, it was a wet process.  The copy would come out wet and we would have to hang them on a grid on a door to dry.  

Another thing we used often was a stencil machine.  This was using a long piece of blue paper, put on a roller-type machine and you could make a multitude of copies.  To make any correction while typing on it you used a type of liquid as when typed it removed the finish under the letter.

Even though technology has improved greatly over the years, I find it so interesting that we still always seem to get behind.  We spend more time learning new technology when, in fact, the old way turns out to be a lot faster in most instances. I have said that sometimes I would like to just do it the old way and it would get done a lot faster.

One big change is the use of computers versus typewriters.  While in my last years of school, we went from manual typewriters to electric typewriters.  This was a big change at the time.  Now, typewriters have been replaced by computers.  Typewriters are hardly ever used and are considered to be antiques.

But, it sure is fun (and a lot of frustration) trying to figure out how to save time!

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