those days are gone

Preoccupied by a recent post of TPB's, I decided to take a test to determine exactly how much more or less efficient it would be for me as a lawyer to give dictation as opposed to typing my own documents.

I have a reputation as a fast typist among people who sit near me in class. This is particularly handy in Civ Pro, when getting the professor's exact wording down is key to preparing for the test, or in Contracts, where sometimes the only way to make sense of the professor's speech is in print.

Turns out I type a hundred words per minute, according to the test. (103 if you include uncorrected typos.)

For some reason this doesn't make me proud. TPB's post unintentionally hit a long-dormant nerve. Anyone who has ever worked as an administrative assistant -- particularly anyone with a college degree who would have torn out her own toenails to be doing anything else -- knows what I'm talking about. It never leaves you, that sense of being bound to servitude, the fear that you'll be banished back down the org chart as soon as things don't work out. As you get older and your resume deepens, the fear is tempered a bit; work experience and graduate degrees insulate you from the risk. With a master's or a law degree, with more and more years of experience in other lines of work, it's less and less likely that the rug will be yanked out from under your feet, that you'll have to go back to the ten-line telephone and the unenclosed desk.

But at the end of the day, it's like waiting tables. You can tell former waitstaff by the huge tips they leave. I feel the same way about secretaries. My heart goes out to the talented young women (and yes, they're largely women) who are stuck taking dictation because they majored in something that wasn't economics. Should any of same ever wind up working for me, may I lose my toenails if I ever treat them the way I swore I'd never let anyone treat me again.

thus spake /jca @ November 17, 2002 09:26 PM